Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
In a randomized pilot study, patients who suffered from substance loss in
their median nerves due to its severe compression in the carpal tunnel were
included and electrical stimulation was applied to the compression-released
median nerve (
Gordon, Chan, et al., 2009; Gordon et al., 2010
). This treat-
ment significantly increased the number of functional motor units in the the-
nar muscle and resulted in significantly accelerated reinnervation (several
months) of the distal targets in comparison to nonstimulated patients
(
Gordon, Chan, et al., 2009; Gordon et al., 2010
).
These positive clinical reports together with increasing knowledge on
the regeneration-promoting mechanisms initiated by electrical stimulation
of the peripheral nerve will probably support a wider use of electrical stim-
ulation as cotreatment for nerve reconstruction surgery in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Funded by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme
(FP7-
HEALTH-2011) under grant agreement n
278612.
Conflict of interest disclosure: No conflicts of interests exist for any of the authors.
REFERENCES
Alrashdan, M. S., Sung, M. A., Kim Kwon, Y., Chung, H. J., Kim, S. J., & Lee, J. H. (2011).
Effects of combining electrical stimulation with BDNF gene transfer on the regeneration
