Paralyzed Man Regains Hand Function after Breakthrough Nerve Rewiring Procedure

A 71-year-old man who became paralyzed from the waist down and lost all use of both hands in a 2008 car accident has regained motor function in his fingers after doctors rewired his nerves to bypass the damaged ones in a pioneering surgical procedure, according to a case study published on Tuesday.

While the man still had limited arm, elbow and shoulder movement, because he had crushed his spinal cord at the C7 vertebrae located at the base of his neck, the nerve circuits responsible for sending singles from the brain to the muscles in his hands became severed, which resulted in loss of movement in both his hands.

However, because the nearby nerves had not been injured in the accident, surgeons were able to cut an undamaged nerve in the man’s elbow and connect it to the damaged nerve which activates muscles in the hand responsible for grasping objects.

"The circuit [in the hand] is intact, but no longer connected to the brain,” Surgeon Ida Fox, an assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Washington University, explained to the BBC. "What we do is take that circuit and restore the connection to the brain."

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