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New Technique To Identify Nerve Damage And Repair LONDON, ENGLAND -- October 24, 1997 -- A research letter in this week's The Lancet describes a technique, magnetic resonance neurography (MRN), that can, for the first time, visualise the process of nerve damage and repair over time. Researchers Dr. Andrew Dailey and colleagues, from the United States, report the use of MRN in a 29-year-old man who had lacerated the nerve in his lower thigh and was unable to move his right foot. After emergency surgery, the man was assessed by standard clinical and electrodiagnostic examinations and MRN. Six months after the first attempt at surgical repair, all examinations showed that there was no nerve recovery, so a second operation was carried out. This time the operation was successful and eight months later the patient began to show evidence of muscle repair; at 16 months, the MRN signals were normal and the patient's muscle strength had returned to near normal. At each stage, the MRN signals correlated with the clinical and electrodiagnostic findings. In cases of nerve injury, the decision about whether or not to operate needs to be made as soon as possible, but standard techniques cannot reliably distinguish between nerves that are recovering and those that are not and require surgical repair. Because the MRN findings agreed with the standard assessments, the investigators believe MRN techniques will minimise the need for exploratory surgery, thereby avoiding unnecessary and invasive surgery in patients with nerve damage. E-mail this page to a friend or colleague! To print, use this version