CAUSES

Injury to nerves in the hand or wrist is often caused by trauma, such as the area being cut, overstretched, crushed or burned, damaging the nerve or nerve ending.

A cut to the nerve can cause it to no longer transmit signals, because the signal cannot jump through a gap in the nerve.  Injuries to the nerve can range from mild, temporary injury to a more severe, permanent injury.

SYMPTOMS

The signs and symptoms of nerve injuries can be different depending on the nerve injured, the type of injury, and the severity of the injury. Some may include:

Numbness: Some nerves only transmit sensation, so a nerve injury to these nerves would cause numbness.

Weakness: In addition to sensory nerves, some nerves give you the ability to move, and other nerves do both of these things.  Injury to nerves that carry motor signals causes weakness.

Pain: This is frequently a symptom after nerve injury. The pain present after a nerve injury can be anywhere along the course of the nerve, but it is typically at the injury site.

DIAGNOSIS

In emergency, the examination of a wound of the hand or the wrist is difficult because of the often important pain and bleeding. As such, the rule is that any wound in the hand on the anatomical path of a tendon, nerve or artery must be surgically explored under good technical conditions.

TREATMENT

This procedure corrects nerve damage caused by injury.

In the case of simple nerve wounds without loss of substance or whose repair does not involve tension of the sutured nerve, the treatment is the direct suture of the nerve stumps by means of small 9/0 or 10/0 stitches. This should always be done by experienced surgeons, and by using magnifying glasses and / or microscopes.

When there is a significant loss of substance or direct suture is impossible, the nerve graft (interposition of a segment of nerve taken from an accessory nerve, usually the sural nerve) is used to reconstruct the defect.