By ADRIANNA MacPHERSON<\/p>\n
A University of Alberta researcher has found a treatment that increases the speed of nerve regeneration by three to five times, which may one day lead to much better outcomes for trauma surgery patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe use the term \u2018time is muscle,\u2019\u201d said Christine Webber, an associate professor in the U of A\u2019s anatomy division and a member of the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute. \u201cIf that regrowing nerve can\u2019t get to the muscle fast enough, you\u2019re not going to get a functional repair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peripheral nerve injury occurs in about three per cent of trauma victims. The slow nature of nerve regeneration means that often muscles atrophy before the nerve has a chance to grow and reconnect.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where conditioning electrical stimulation (CES) comes in.<\/p>\n
Webber and her collaborators\u2014plastic surgery resident and former PhD student Jenna-Lynn Senger, and physical rehabilitation clinician Ming Chan\u2014have examined CES for animal nerve regeneration in many previous publications. The process involves electrically stimulating a nerve at the fairly low rate of 20 hertz for one hour. A week after the CES treatment, nerve surgery is done, and the nerves grow back three to five times faster than if the surgery was done without CES.<\/p>\n