The Derby City Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association Network- Serving Kentuckiana.
Message From the President
Dear Members & Friends-
Please remember that January’s meeting has
been canceled. February’s meeting will be held
at Frazier Institute, 220 Abraham Flexnor
Way, Louisville, in the 10th floor dining room
at 6:30 p.m.
- David Allgood
The following are from the Internet—ed.
REROUTING NERVES MAY RESTORE
BLADDER CONTROL FOR PARALYZED
Needing a wheelchair isn’t always the biggest
complaint of people left paralyzed by spinal cord
injury—it’s also the loss of bladder control. Michigan
doctors have begun a unique experiment to see if
rerouting patients’ nerves just might fix that problem.
It’s a delicate operation: surgeons cut open a spot on
the spine and sew two normally unrelated nerves
together—one from the bladder to one from the thigh—
with a single hair-thin stitch. It will take months for this
new nerve bridge to heal, an anxious waiting period for
the first volunteers.
But if it works, merely scratching the thigh should
signal the bladder to empty, allowing patients to ditch
their despised catheters and restore a longed-for degree
of freedom, as well as fewer bladder infections and other
serious complications.
“I’ve nothing to lose by doing this,” is the way a
cautiously hopeful Kevin Bryant, 19 and paralyzed from
the waist down by a car crash, approached the
experiment.
It’s a technique pioneered in China that is starting to
garner international attention—and surgeons at William
Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oaks, Mich., hope their
new U.S. study will prove if the approach really is a
solution for at least some patients.
“We’re very excited,” says Dr. Kenneth Peters,
Beuamont’s urology research chief, who headed a team
of doctors that traveled to China last February to watch
