Innovative nerve surgery reverses hand and arm paralysis

Using a new type of nerve transfer surgery, an Australian surgeon has been able to restore the hand and arm movement in 13 adult patients who were paralyzed in sports and traffic accidents.

Now that the patients are able to use their hands and extend their arms from the elbow, they can feed themselves and write, surgeon Natasha van Zyl told The Guardian. "Extending your elbow allows you to push a wheelchair better, helps you to transfer in and out of a car, reach out and do something in space in front of you, shake someone's hand," she said.

Van Zyl wrote about her research in the medical journal The Lancet, explaining that her team originally started with 16 patients, before two decided against the nerve transfer and a third died from an unrelated matter. Ten of the patients had nerve transfers in one arm and tendon transplants in the other, and four nerve transplants in three patients failed, with the tendon transplants then the back-up option. One patient, Paul Robinson, told The Guardian the surgery is "really a life-changing thing."

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The surgery involves removing a working donor nerve from the shoulder, which is used to bypass the damaged section of nerve. It is connected back up to the spinal cord, restoring signals to the muscle that straightens the elbow. Prior to this, nerve transfers had not been successful in spinal cord injuries, van Zyl told The Guardian, and she decided to try her method on paralyzed patients after seeing it work on people whose neck and shoulder nerves had been pulled out of the spinal cord. Her team has since performed 160 nerve transfers.