Regenerating a Radial Nerve Injury with Injections?
This is a guest blog post by Dr. Jamil Bashir, who wrote up the same radial nerve injury patient that I did. I thought it would be great to get his take as the treating physician:
Regenerating a Radial Nerve Injury
In many ways our bodies are like machines. Complex organisms that enable us to successfully navigate our surroundings. When we desire to perform an action, a neuron in our central nervous system (brain), much like a circuit in a computer, sends an impulse from our motor cortex down our spinal cord. In the spinal cord, a second neuron stands ready to receive the signal of our intention and send it through our peripheral nervous system to the muscles it innervates, thus creating our actions. Our muscles rely on signals from the nerves that innervate them. Without these signals they wither and die. In fact even when we sleep our muscles remain in a constant state of low-level firing. These “tonic contractions” are low impulse signals from our nervous system that send bioelectricity through our muscle cells, giving them the constant stimulus they require for life.
What happens when a nerve is damaged?
As mentioned, there are two types of nerves: central and peripheral. Central nerve damage is what occurs during a stroke, as blood flow to the brain is impaired, or during a traumatic brain injury, where shear forces act to damage neurons. Unlike the other cells in our bodies, nerves do not undergo mitosis (or division). The same neuron you had at birth is still alive today, older and wiser. This is why nerve damage is so detrimental.
Fortunately, these lifetime-loyal nerve cells do have some resilience. They can rebuild their projections (axons). This is good. Without this ability, a nerve crushed at the elbow would leave us permanently impaired. Instead, the secondary neuron in the spinal cord can send repair machinery to the injured axon and facilitate regrowth, although the regrown nerve does have some properties inferior to its uninjured former self. At times, nerves injured in the periphery are not damaged beneath the myelin coating down to the actual axons, but instead the myelin is damaged, which local Schwann cells can produce and secrete to recoat nerves and restore proper signaling.
Despite this resilience, nerves often do not fully recover from injuries. That is where Regenerative Medicine steps in. As you know, Regenerative Medicine is the quest to understand the body’s own healing mechanisms and apply them to injuries to target and amplify healing. The concept is beautifully simple–harnessing the power of blood and adult mesenchymal stem cells (amongst other healing cells), which naturally collect at sites of injury, and deciphering their mysteries to generate healing.
Nerve testing revealed severe damage to the radial nerve and after a revision surgery to remove the plate, he was left with the frightful diagnosis of a severe peripheral radial nerve injury. He was told that peripheral nerves, at best, regrow at a rate of 1 mm a day, and function in his arm and hand may return in a matter of months if not years.
He presented to our clinic with the devastating loss of his left hand and wrist, as well as decreased strength in elbow flexion on exam and a severely restricted left arm with inability to lift it any higher than his shoulder. Here is where the art of what we are trying to accomplish at Regenexx really begins to unfold. After reading his reports and determining his radial nerve was damaged at a point in the humerus termed the spiral groove, we quickly assessed the left arm as a whole. Neurologic examination revealed no impairment to the musculature of the shoulder which led to a diagnosis of “frozen shoulder,” a common condition seen in any disease/injury that leads to long periods of inactivity in a joint such as a stroke or in this case a prolonged hospitalization.
Frozen shoulder is one of the conditions that responds with a very high success rate at our clinic. The treatment is actually relatively simple, from which he recovered very quickly. The decreased elbow flexion also was due to a torn long head of the biceps tendon, which also responded relatively rapidly to a Super Concentrated Platelet (SCP) injection, followed by appropriate physical therapy. Next up, the most complex injury, the peripherally injured radial nerve.
Let’s integrate what we learned from our previous discussion regarding nerves and apply our Regenerative Medicine strategies to promote healing. In this case, the nerve was crushed resulting in both injury to the myelin sheath, as well as the axon within. Under ultrasound guidance, the nerve was traversed as it spiraled around the posterior aspect of the humerus to the area of the spiral groove, and then down through the supinator muscle of the forearm where it branches into the deep and superficial radial nerve. After visualizing the nerve’s path and applying a local nerve block to make the procedure more tolerable, Platelet Lysate-Material (PL-M) was used to hydro-dissect the nerve at the site of injury at the spiral groove.
PL-M is a preparation much like our SCP, however, in this case the concentrated platelets derived from the patients own blood are lysed or opened allowing the multitude of growth factors (GF), “signaling molecules,” contained within to rapidly bathe the injured nerve. GFs contained with Platelet Lysate-Material identified as critical for nerve repair are platelet-derived growth factors (PDGF), Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), Vascular endothelial factor (VEGF) and Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-B). PDGF receptors are upregulated on axons and Schwan cells in injured nerves. PDGF stimulates neurotrophic (nerve stimulating) factors to be released, which promotes the regeneration of peripheral nerves. IGF-1 directly binds to IGF-1 receptors to stimulate the first step in myelin synthesis. The simultaneous application of both PDGF and IGF-1 can induce a more rapid regeneration than either of them alone. VEGF, induces angiogenesis (blood vessel formation) which is a critical step allowing nutrients to flood the area of repair. TGF-b can reactivate chronically injured Schwann cells, inciting them to synthesize and release neurotrophic factors, promoting myelin as well as axonal regeneration.
After three PL-M hydro-dissections of his radial nerve he has regained roughly 70% of his ability to extend his wrist and about 20% of his ability to extend his fingers. At this point we are continuing the healing process with care taken now to begin the fine needlework that must take place to restore as much finger dexterity as possible. If you recall the “tonic contractions” we discussed earlier, a finding that occurs in cases of nerve damage is formation of adhesions between individual muscles. Indeed, at times the resultant lack of function that ensues after nerve damage is a product of “bunching” together of individual muscles into clumsy, poorly coordinated conglomerates of tissue, despite re-innervation having already occurred.
In our patient’s case this is where we have arrived at in his healing journey, beginning to further hydro-dissect individual muscle fibers in his hand, in conjunction with further small nerve fiber hydro-dissections as we serve to both re-innervate the muscles, and also tease them apart from one another so that the nerves can fully reconnect in the delicate arrangement needed to give rise to fine motor movements of the hand.
The exploration of healing continues at Regenexx. Each patient’s unique case offers us the opportunity to add more pages to the annals of the rapidly evolving field of Regenerative Medicine. Best of all, we get the opportunity to see our patients heal and regain a greater quality of life, which is really what the field of medicine is, and always will be, all about.
*For references please email to [email protected]
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This is an excellent well articulated description of a technique that works extremely well. Great job!
Another well-written, interesting article. I’m hoping that Regeneratve Medicine within my lifetime (I’m old enough to remember when David Bowie was doing his Ziggy Stardust routine) becomes commonplace and there are reasonable, consistent standards applied. I believe in caveat emptor, but it seems the Wild West in this field exists today with many doctors offering “magic” stem cell cures.
Question: has Regenexx ever done any stem cell procedures/injections for Distal Clavicle Osteolysis (a/k/a “weight lifter’s shoulder”)?
Denis,
We are hoping with you! We have. What caused the Distal Clavicle Osteolysis?
I believe lifting weights caused the DCO, as I have classic symptoms and a little bump over the AC joint. I’m not a bodybuilder, but have been lifting about 3x a week for several decades. The pain is intermittent and able to be managed, for now at least (by avoiding dips, keeping arms/elbows closer to the body for push ups, bench presses etc.) But if it gets worse, I want to consider all options and thus follow your Regenexx posts closely. Many thanks for your info on this site.
Denis,
DCO is generally an overuse injury which overtime causes tiny fractures in the clavicle, eroding the bone. Two suggestions:1.Get it properly diagnosed. 2.If that is the problem, get it treated as it will become more difficult to treat over time and your options will become limited. If you fill out the Regenexx Candidate form on this page, we can take a look at your most recent MRI or Xray and chat about what’s going on and what can be done: https://regenexx.com/the-regenexx-procedures/shoulder-surgery-alternative/
Hi there!, I was curious to know if you have a procedure for treatment of fecal incontinence arising from nerve damage because everywhere I search there is only treatment for FI caused by sphincter injury.thanks a lot
Ali
Ali,
When you say nerve damage, are you referring to spinal nerve damage?
Pudendal Nerve
Ali,
I will inquire…
Hello there,
Any new info regarding my question?
Kind Regards
Ali
Ali,
Sending an email.
Looking for options/ideas for a radial nerve that isn’t regenerating as anticipated. This is following a distal humerus fracture with surgery. It has been 5 months with no improvement in the radial nerve. The Ulnar and Medial nerves are doing well. Patient is an 18 year old male. Thanks
Scot,
If you’d like to see if he would be a candidate for the type of procedure in the Blog, please submit the Candidate form to the right of the Blog.
Fascinated by this article. Have you considered an IV (intravenous) stem cell application? I had very advanced lyme disease and fear I have some minor CNS and peripheral nerve damage because of it. Would love increasing my NT-3, NT-4, CNTF levels to encourage regeneration. Also one suggestion: the graston technique is a way I broke up adhesions/scar tissue in my back and lowered my back pain to a 1 or 2 on most days, perhaps it could be used for those muscles that were fused with scar tissue?
IV stem cell infusions in the US are a scam, as they contain no live and functional stem cells based on multiple independent studies. Even if you went overseas, the other issue would be that many of these damaged nerve areas are avascular and 97% of stem cells delivered IV would end up in the lungs and not in these nerves. Hence, you would need to apply the cells locally to the nerves via advanced ultrasound guidance. On soft tissue techniques like Graston, definitely worth a try.
Hi, About 8 years ago I had a left axillary lymph node biopsy which resulted in damage to my ulnar nerve most likely from the cautery. I was treated with an exploration and removal of scar tissue with lysis of the nerve sheath 3 months later. At 9 months I had a nerve transfer in my wrist which cut the motor branch of the ulnar nerve so that it could be attached to the anterior branch of the medial nerve. The sensory portion of the ulnar nerve was left intact. Motor function never really returned. The sensory function only returned partially leaving me with constant painful neuropathy to the ulnar distribution of my hand. Is it too late to consider Ultrasounded guided stem cell injections to the damaged ulnar nerve in my axilla to help with the pain and possibly regenerate the sensation back ? Thanks
Yes, likely too late for platelet lysate hydrodissection as described here.