Novel MRI for Diagnosing Traumatic Brachial Plexus Injuries

The aims are:

1. Investigate new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans for diagnosing severe nerve injury in the arm.
2. Understand how the brain and spinal cord respond to severe nerve injury using MRI.

The nerves which control movement and feeling in the arm can be severely damaged in eg. motorbike crashes, sporting or work-related injuries. Every year 500 adults sustain life-changing major nerve injuries, causing 1) disability needing constant care, 2) life-long pain and 3) mental illness. In England, major nerve injuries cost £250million every year in hospital treatments, unemployment and social care. Injured nerves can be repaired with surgery.

To decide if nerves need repairing, exploratory surgery is needed. Instead, we have developed a new MRI scan which could diagnose nerve injuries, meaning that exploratory surgery could be avoided, nerve injuries could be diagnosed sooner and reconstructive surgery performed sooner.

Some people with nerve injuries develop lifelong pain - if we could understand how the brain adapts, we could learn how to prevent nerve pain. Also, some people don't recover movement in their hand - if we could understand how the brain reorganises nerves controlling movement, we could predict who would benefit from surgery.