United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Hello, I'm six months new to BPI due to a motorcycle accident. Just had surgery two months ago at the Mayo Clinic in Minn. on my right arm(4 intercostal nerves relocated to bicep, in which 2 of them went to a transfered gracilus muscle, and 1/2 of left C7 transfered to right shoulder, deltoid). I went this route because Dr. Carlsted of the Royal National Othopedic Hospital of London, whom I understand is one of the few leaders in the field of reimplantation, told me that I didn't fit the requirements. Three avulsed nerves was 2 shy of the necessary 5, and my hospital release date of one month post injury was just about pushing it to the surgical time limit. I can't seem to shake my desire to know more about nerve reimplantation. It just seems like the natural resolve to this crappy situation. My curiosity needs quieting, so if anyone out there has heard of any one that's had reimplantation, could you let me know? Thanks. Christopher Janney

Hi Christopher
I don't know of anyone who's had the reimplantation procedure Prof Carlstedt is doing, altho I know a couple of guys who have him as their doctor. I know that ideally he likes to do the op within hours of the accident for optimum results. The bpi clinic in Rome also is looking at reimplantation of peripheral nerves as far as I remember. It sounds like you had your grafts fairly early, hopefully you'll get a good result, fingers crossed for you.
O)ne of the guys on the UK tbpi site is thinking about having the gracilis muscle transfer and is looking for info, here's a link to the post. Maybe you can help him. http://pub28.ezboard.com/fadultswithbra ... =678.topic
Let us know how the grafts are going, and good luck :0)

a lady has posted under yours on the tbpi uk board Chris, she had all 5 nerves avulsed and had reimplantation within 36 hours of the accident by Prof Birch in London. She didn't realise that's what she'd had until she read your post! 16 months later she's starting to get some recovery. So Carlstedt's work is definitely crossing into the mainstream at last, hopefully avulsion of all 5 nerves won't be such a big deal in the future. Thanks for posting, none of us realised we had an 'implantee' in our membership & it will be interesting to see how she gets on.

hey chris thats my name to and i also had a motorcycle accident in august 2002 i avulsed c5 c6 c7 and streched t1 c8 right side i had the intercostal nerve graft in janurary 2003 they used three nerves to the bicep and took a nerve from my trapezious muscle to the deltoid they didnt do the muscle transfer right away but said that if shoulder and elbow stabilized that they would do the gracilous muscle transfer and the crossover my dr said that he was at a confrence a few weeks ago and there is a dr in france that has done about 4 surgerys were they re implant the nerves back in the spine but they are still in early stages and not really showing much improvment but thats a start my email adrress is hdcrash@aol.com i have a post here under that name that will explain mine a little better sounds like were in the same boat i would like to know more info on yours and feel free to ask any on mine thanks