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Show Navy Surgeons Detour Nerves New Methods of Restoring Function to Deadened Muscles Succeeds. WASHINGTON. Navy nerve urgeons have borrowed a page from the book of the highway engineer. They are restoring function func-tion to deadened muscle by setting up "detours" and "road blocks" in the human nervous system. In battle wounds where a nerve Is partly shot away and the ends are too far apart to be stretched together, the surgeons change the course of the nerve. By such "detouring" the undamaged undam-aged parts of the nerve travel a shorter course than did the original nerve, and thus it is often possible to bring the cut ends together so that they can be sewed end-to-end. In numerous cases navy men with an arm or leg virtually useless have been returned to duty, says the Chicago Chi-cago Tribune. Sometimes a nerve may be too far gone to be repaired. In many instances the surgeons make a nearby near-by nerve do double duty. This is accomplished by lifting a tendon from the muscle fed by the good nerve and attaching the free end of the tendon to the muscle in which the nerve is dead or damaged beyond be-yond repair. This technique works particularly particular-ly well in a case where a wrist has "dropped" due to damage to a nerve controlling the muscles of the outer aide of the hand. 'Road Blocking' Technique. The "road blocking" technique in the nervous system is something . entirely different. A nerve is made up of a number of fibers covered by a sheath similar to a telephone cable. Sometimes in a nerve injury only part of the nerve fibers are destroyed. Others remain undam- i aged. ' Scientists have found that by pinching these good fibers not cutting cut-ting them they cause nature to work overtime in order to overcome the inlirruption in the nerve fibers. The result has been a branching off of new fibers from the place of the pinching, causing the "reinnerva-tion" "reinnerva-tion" of the muscle involved. Pioneers who applied this technique tech-nique performed surgical operations In order to reach undamaged fibers, and they pinched the fibers with fine forceps. But within the last year or so two investigators at California Institute of Technology at Pasadena began developing a technique without with-out surgical incision. Their method was to knead a muscle vigorously with a smooth, blunt instrument such as the smooth, round end of a mallet handle han-dle concentrating on the point where the nerve entered the muscle. Proves Success. The California investigators Lieut. H. E. Billig Jr., U. S. N. R., and pr. A. Van Harreveld reported successful use of this technique in a number of cases, including that of a woman who had been suffering from infantile paralysis of the le.gs for many years. They said the patient's muscle power greatly improved following fol-lowing the procedure. Doctors at San Diego naval hos- pital are using both the surgical ana manual methods, and Capt. M. D. Willicutts, medical officer in command com-mand of the hospital, says the results re-sults so far are "very promising.'' Diego said: "We have tried tt avoid nerve grafts. The results so far have not shown this technique to be as good as that of getting the two cut ends of the nerve together by such methods meth-ods as changing the nerve's course." They said the whole approach to the treatment of injuries to the peripheral pe-ripheral nerves the nerves which feed the arms and legs had changed since the last war. |