Nerve Transfer Surgery Restores Movement to Man's Fingers

This video from the Ottawa Hospital gives details of the operation to restore some movement to Timothy Raglin's fingers. There is some graphic surgical content that you may want to skip through.

Last month in Ottawa, surgeons performed a nerve transfer operation on Timothy Raglin, a quadriplegic, to give him some movement in his fingers. My understanding of the procedure is that there are duplicate nerves in your arms, and the surgery involved rewiring two of these duplicate nerves in Timothy Raglin's arm to nerves in his fingers that are not connected to the brain after a spinal cord injury. Some regrowth of the nerve is necessary, and the doctors figure it could be up to a year before any results can be seen. According to a story on the Ottawa Hospital's website, this type of procedure has been performed only a few times before, but research is ongoing.