User:Patrickmcgillen/neurapraxia

My group's proposal (in the form of an article outline)

Intro: What is it?

temporary failure of nerve conduction in the absence of structural changes, due to blunt injury, compression, or ischemia

• Focal Conduction Block

• Transient

• Ischemic

• affects mainly large-caliber axons

• More persistent

• demyelinating

• attributable to an underlying primary/segmental demyelination

• axonal constriction

• injury to a nerve resulting in paralysis without degeneration and followed by rapid and complete recovery of function
• partial or complete conduction block over a segment of a nerve fiber, with temporary paralysis
• nerve condition characterized by localized loss of conduction that causes short-term paralysis, there is no degeneration of the axon and complete recovery is usual
  

Causes of Neuropraxia

• focal blocking of impulse conduction usually due to compression

compression:

exogenous pressure affecting a peripheral nerve causes decreased blood flow and structural deformation of nerve fibers

• conduction study

waveform, amplitude, duration

latency and conduction velocity

types of abnormalities

reference: Peripheral Neuropathy 4th edition, 2005

Diagnosis of Neurapraxia

• The most commonly described mechanism of injury is axial compression with a component of either hyperflexion or hyperextension
• early signs of nerve injury include:

disturbance of sensation, weakness or paralysis of muscle, vasomotor and sudomotor paralysis in distribution of the affected nerve or nerves, abnormal sensitivity of nerve at point of injury

• Neurapraxia has been reported in association with developmental cervical spinal stenosis, kyphosis, congenital fusions (Klippel-Feil syndrome), cervical instability (traumatic or developmental), and invertebral disc herniation.
  

Symptoms of Neurapraxia

• large myelinated fibers more susceptible than small or unmyelinated ones

• predominant symptoms:

loss of muscle strength

loss of touch sensation

• disturbance of function can last from hrs to weeks only rarely months

An episode of cervical cord neurapraxia generally resolves in less than 10-15 minutes.

Treatments for Neurapraxia

• prognosis for complete recovery is good
• peripheral neurons are large, spatially complex cells whose size and connectivity compromise their capacity to repair

reference: Peripheral Neuropathy 4th edition, 2005

• Studies have shown that 56% of athletes returning to contact sports experienced a recurrent episode of transient cervical cord neurapraxia.

This number was higher when an athlete returned to football versus another sport

Experimental Case/Research Study on Neuropraxia

• Neurapraxia of the cervical spinal cord with transient quadriplegia

JS Torg, H Pavlov, SE Genuario, B Sennett, RJ Wisneski, BH Robie and C Jahre J Bone Joint Surg Am. 1986;68:1354-1370.

• Cervical cord neurapraxia – An acute transient episode of bilateral sensory and motor abnormalities.