On the suture of separate nerve bundles in a nerve trunk and on internal nerve plexuses

THE completeness of recovery of sensation and muscular control after nerve suture depends upon a number of factors. Amongst the factors which delay or prevent complete recovery are the following: 1. A certain number of the fibres of the central end of the nerve, as they grow out, pass into connective tissue instead of into the nerve fibres of the peripheral end and fail to make nervous connexion. The loss of central connexion so caused is to some extent compensated by the division of the nerve fibres which pass into the peripheral end. 2. Some fibres of the central end though they grow into the peripheral end are unable to make functional nerve endings. This occurs when efferent fibres grow into afferent, or afferent into efferent. It almost certainly occurs to some extent also in cross union of afferent fibres of cutaneous sensation and afferent fibres of deep sensation, and may also occur in cross union of the fibres serving for the various forms of each of these classes of sensation.