Although not exactly the same scenario, your fingertip and the article/issue in question demonstrate similar principles re: nerve regrowth. It has been shown that peripheral nerves (i.e. outside the brain/spinal cord) will regrow at approximately 1mm/day. 1/2"is approx. 12mm, thus the nerve probably reached your fingertip rather quickly compared to when sensation actually returned to normal. This discrepancy between regrowth and function plagues nerve grafts in complex bundles (such as the brachial plexus) even more in that the graft/conduit needs to not only allow regrowth, but DIRECTED regrowth. Fibers to muscles must still reach muscle and sensory fibers should reach the appropriate target tissue. Multiply that by the discordant return to NORMAL function and imagine the difficulty in predicting outcome.
One exciting field of research currently involves seeding artificial conduits or cadaveric conduits with an individual's own supporting cells-such as the Schwann cell-in an attempt to facilitate nerve regrowth.
As always, Med-line remains a great resource:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
try searching for: nerve interposition grafts
...by characters from other strips (eg Opus/Mac from Bloom County)? Seems your (Iliad's) style/format would lend itself to the same sarcastic humor that made Bloom County so enjoyable.
Pardon me if this has happened before (I'm new to UF and Linux and may have missed a bit of history). Love the strip.
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Although not exactly the same scenario, your fingertip and the article/issue in question demonstrate similar principles re: nerve regrowth. It has been shown that peripheral nerves (i.e. outside the brain/spinal cord) will regrow at approximately 1mm/day. 1/2"is approx. 12mm, thus the nerve probably reached your fingertip rather quickly compared to when sensation actually returned to normal. This discrepancy between regrowth and function plagues nerve grafts in complex bundles (such as the brachial plexus) even more in that the graft/conduit needs to not only allow regrowth, but DIRECTED regrowth. Fibers to muscles must still reach muscle and sensory fibers should reach the appropriate target tissue. Multiply that by the discordant return to NORMAL function and imagine the difficulty in predicting outcome. One exciting field of research currently involves seeding artificial conduits or cadaveric conduits with an individual's own supporting cells-such as the Schwann cell-in an attempt to facilitate nerve regrowth. As always, Med-line remains a great resource: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi try searching for: nerve interposition grafts
...and thanks to you and Bishop282 for the link!
...by characters from other strips (eg Opus/Mac from Bloom County)? Seems your (Iliad's) style/format would lend itself to the same sarcastic humor that made Bloom County so enjoyable.
Pardon me if this has happened before (I'm new to UF and Linux and may have missed a bit of history). Love the strip.