Nerve Injury Research Paper

Nerve injuries around the shoulder region occur mainly as a result of motor vehicle accidents, gunshot injuries and athletic injuries. Contact sports athletes such as football players and wrestling athletes, are at high risk of nerve injury in the shoulder area, caused by an extreme force and stress applied on the joint. In this acute setting, these injuries may be associated with shoulder dislocation, upper humeral fracture, rotator cuff tear or/and vascular trauma, such as axillary artery rupture. Nevertheless, nerve injuries to the shoulder, can also be caused by overuse and chronic repetitive stress, often observed in sports involving repetitive overhead or throwing activities. A higher incidence in this type of injuries is marked in individuals that specialize at an

The mechanisms of nerve injury include direct pressure, repetitive micro-trauma and compression or stretch-induced ischemia. The severity and extent of compression is related to the degree of the nerve injury (2). Nerve injury grading systems that allow the correlation between microscopic changes preceding the injury and the patient's symptoms have been developed, with those developed by Seddon being the most widely accepted (3,4). Seddon divided nerve injuries into three categories according to severity. Neuroapraxia, the mildest type, has no axonal disruption and only causes transient motor or sensory deficits. Most sports related nerve injuries around the shoulder are first degree injuries (neuroapraxias), with an excellent prognosis, and a full recovery within two weeks. Axonotmesis is the result of a complete nerve axon disruption, while both the