what does it feel like when nerves are healing
if want to get good information about repairing a damaged nerve.
If you are looking for signs and symptoms of damaged nerve repair.
If you want to understand how damaged nerve repair looks and feels like, read on.
If you have nerve damage, know that nerve damage is the most important and worrying complication caused by trauma, blows and accidents.
How do the nerve fibers in our body get damaged?
What will be the repair of damaged nerve fibers?
What does it feel like when nerves are healing?
The answers to the above questions are presented in simple language.
Everything you need to know about nerve fiber damage and repair in this article.
How do our nerves get hurt?
Doctors say that blows, traumas, and accidents are the most common and major causes of nerve damage.
Traumas cause you nerve damage with different mechanisms.
In accidents or traumas where there is a fracture or dislocation of the joint, the Nerve fibers may be trapped between broken or displaced bone. Traction and dislocations of the joints can also cause the nerve to stretch, and heavy bleeding at the site of the accident may put pressure on the nerve.
Nerve fibers may be damaged following surgery or postoperative adhesions.
In an injury in which a sharp object enters the body, the nerve fiber is likely to be ruptured.
Damage to the nerve fibers following compartment syndrome occurs when the pressure inside the compartment generally rises in the leg, High pressure in a confined compartment is associated with decreased blood flow and damage to tissues and nerves in the area.
Stretching the nerve can also cause the nerve to rupture.
If you have an open wound or fracture, your doctor should perform the necessary tests to check for possible nerve damage in those areas. If there is damage or rupture, the nerve repair should be performed surgically at the same initial times.
Sometimes a person has an accident and has a bone fracture, but the fracture is not associated with an open wound. The fracture and displacement of the broken bone may be accompanied by damage to the adjacent nerve. The doctor finds this injury by performing special clinical examinations and sometimes NCV, and generally monitors and follows the patient for three months in terms of the process of repairing the injured nerve.
But how do they notice the repair of a damaged nerve?
In this case, the doctor examines the signs of improvement for three months in regular examinations. For example, if a nerve injury has paralyzed the movement of a number of fingers, the doctor, with the knowledge of the traumatic nerve involved in this disorder, will check other movements related to that trauma in the next sessions.
With the repair of the damaged nerve, the movements related to that nerve can be done or if the nerve is related to the sensation of a specific area, the person should be able to feel the feeling of the needle being squeezed and thermal changes such as heat and cold on his skin, following the repair of the damaged nerve.
On the other hand, when the nerve fibers are damaged, an insulating sheath that surrounds the fibers is called myelin, will be damaged.
Myelin damage reduces the speed of nerve conduction inside the nerve filament. By repairing the nerve, the myelin sheath is also repaired and the speed of conducting the nerve message inside the nerve will be normalized.
These assessments will be performed by a test called the NCV.
NCV is sometimes simply called an electromyography.
Doctors say that if there is a partial recovery within three months of follow-up in the clinical examination and electromyography, the follow-up will continue, but if the clinical examination and electromyography or NCV do not show any signs of repair, surgery may be necessary.
What are the types of nerve damage?
We have three types of nerves in our body.
Autonomic nerves whose function is not affected by our will, the regulation of heart and lung activity, digestion and blood pressure and body temperature are related to this system.
Motor nerves that carry the message of movement from the spinal cord or brain to the relevant muscle.
Sensory nerves that carry peripheral perceptions to the brain or spinal cord, and those messages are processed and perceived as sensory stimuli such as heat, cold, pain, touch, pressure, smell, taste, and vision.
So in nerve damage, the symptoms will be related to the type of nerve and the severity of the damage.
Symptoms of nerve damage
Symptoms of a nerve injury include:
- Inability to move due to damage to hormones in the brain and spinal cord or motor nerves outside the skull and spine.
- Paralysis
- Muscle slimming
- Abnormal muscle contractions and muscle stiffness
- Standing imbalance, which can be a combination of sensory and motor disorders.
- numbness and tingling in sensory nerve damage
- Sometimes ectopic pain in sensory nerve damage
- And not understanding the situation, for example, one does not know where his or her foot is
- Excessive sweating or lack of sweating is caused by autonomic nerve damage
- Dry mouth and eyes following autonomic nerve damage
- Impaired bladder function
- Sexual problems
- Constipation
- Lightheadedness
- Chest pain without understanding the cause
Other causes of damage to the health of nerve fibers
After trauma, which is the most common cause of nerve damage in our body, it is better to get acquainted with other causes that damage the health of nerve fibers.
- Diabetes
- Alcoholism
- Deficiency of some vitamins and malnutrition in general
- Poisoning by some chemical elements that are neurotoxic.
- Poisons
- Infections such as:
- Viruses: Hepatitis C, HIV
- Bacteria: Bacteria that cause diphtheria
medicines
Some drugs can damage nerves outside the brain and spinal cord. These damages are called peripheral neuropathy.
For example, some chemotherapy drugs
Autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis can also be associated with neuropathy, or nerve damage.
Myasthenia gravis, lupus, Guillain-Barré syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and even inflammatory bowel disease or IBDs can be associated with peripheral neuropathies.
Infections include: Lyme and herpes virus.
Vitamin B6 and B12 deficiency can be added to malnutrition. Malnutrition following gastric surgery can also be associated with peripheral neuropathy.
Neurotoxic toxins include lead, arsenic, and mercury.
Motor neurone disease, like ALS, is also referred to as a living nerve injury.
What is the diagnosis of nerve fiber injury?
From the clinical signs, nerve damage can be understood to a large extent.
For example, following traumas and accidents that are accompanied by fractures and crumbs of the arm, shoulder, and wrist, doctors ask the patient to move the fingers of the wrist, arm, and shoulder in different directions. Any disturbance in the motor nerve fibers from the shoulder to the fingertips will have a specific disability.
They also assess the sensation of these areas. The motor nerves from the shoulder to the fingertips will have a special inability to move.
Sensory nerve damage causes disorders in certain areas, which this damage in sense indicates a specific sensory nerve damage.
These connections are associated with the knowledge and literacy of the treating physician.
In other words, the physician should examine the nerves adjacent to the injury site in proportion to the location of the injury in trauma and accidents.
In addition to these studies and appropriate clinical examinations to obtain more accurate information about nerve damage, the physician may request an Electromyography or, more scientifically, an EMG-NCV.
In addition to diagnosing nerve damage, physicians use EMG-NCV to assess the severity of the injury and later to follow the healing process and evaluate the healing process of the injury.
Electromyography or nerve conduction velocity will be able to assess the following disorders:
MS disease
ALS
Nerve damage outside the brain and spinal cord or peripheral neuropathy, Nerve damage in the hands, feet, and arms, and…
and peripheral nerve damage in diabetes.
Injuries caused by pressure on the nerves in the back or neck, which is called radiculopathy.
Evaluation of sudden and involuntary muscle spasms
Use in spinal disc herniation to evaluate damaged nerve root
And…
In traumatic injuries where the nerve fiber is damaged, what methods are used to help repair the nerve?
Nerve repair:
When a nerve fiber is cut from one place but the two cut edges are completely adjacent without being crushed and spaced apart, in these cases only the covering layer around the nerve called the epineurium will be sewn together.
Anger link:
If the site of nerve damage is accompanied by nerve crushing, the surgeon will remove part of the injured area. After this removal, you can imagine that the two ends of the nerve do not meet, so to communicate, the two ends must meet. Usually, only part of the nerve in the leg, called the cervical nerve, is cut and transferred to the injury site for transplantation.
Nerve transfer:
If the nerve damage is so great that the above methods cannot be done, one end of the healthy nerve is cut by the surgeon and sewn to the other end of the injured nerve.
Tendon transfer:
If repair and treatment of nerve damage is not possible, the surgeon restores the movement of the injured tendons in the injured arm and leg to normalize the movements that have disappeared following nerve paralysis with the tendons of the muscles that have healthy nerves.
When the nerve is repaired, the nerve must grow and be able to reach the relevant skin or muscle.
The sensory nerves must reach to the skin and the motor nerve must grow enough to reach their own muscle.
At best, the nerve grows by one millimeter daily, so it cannot be expected that the repaired nerve will immediately be accompanied by a complete improvement in movement and sensation.
The very important point is that if you have a repaired nerve and you are recovering, you should not sit idle!
During the repair of the nerve, their respective muscles may become so weak that when the improved nerve reaches them, they will not be able to react and move, so the muscles must be activated, but how is this possible?
The physiotherapist, with a special daily program, will stimulate these muscles to work with a standard electrical stimulation.
Joint dryness is another concern while waiting for the injured nerve to heal. In these cases, the joints adjacent to the injury site must be moved constantly by your own hand or by another person.
What contributes to the success of nerve repair?
Type of nerve damage:
Cutting the nerve with a flat, sharp object has a better repair than crushing and tearing the nerve with a blunt object or with irregular edges.
nerve size:
The smaller the nerve and, for example, the closer it is to the finger, the more successful the repair will be compared to a nerve that is thicker and closer to the trunk.
Type of nerve:
Healing in a nerve that is only sensory or only motor will be much better than repairing nerves with sensory and motor fibers.
The type and technique of restoration and the surgeon's skill in restoration are very important and effective in achieving a successful result.
Finally, the younger the injured patient, the more successful the nerve repair will be.