Improved diagnostics and therapeutic decision making in traumatic peripheral nerve lesions using MR-neurography

Background: The correct diagnosis of peripheral nerve injuries is essential for choosing the correct treatment in nerve surgery. Especially, nerve defects require early diagnosis to provide quick surgical reconstruction and prevent long-term disabilities. Recent developments in MR-neurography provide surgeons with a diagnostic tool delivering precise information on the structure and possibly function of nerves. Here we describe a series of cases, that benefited from preoperative MR-neurography to identify the correct type of injury.

Methods: We demonstrate five traumatic nerve injuries which were evaluated using high-resolution MR-neurography imaging for therapeutic planning, combined with standard clinical, electrophysiological and sonography diagnostics. We show the clinical feasibility, benefit of this new technique for nerve surgery and the correlation of preoperative MR-neurography images to the intraoperative situation (in surgically managed cases).

Results: Two cases were successfully treated without surgery based on the intact nerve-integrity found in the MR-neurography, despite pathological electrophysiology and inconclusive sonography. In three cases, the MR-Neurography enabled a precise diagnosis and localization of the nerve lesion. Thereby, a precise surgical reconstruction of the nerve lesion was achieved, confirming the matching of MR-neurography findings and intraoperative situs.

Conclusions: Although, systematic clinical analyses are not available yet, our data suggest that MR-neurography can help surgeons to correctly define the type of nerve injury and thus identify the appropriate treatment preoperatively. In the presented cases, MR-neurography correctly diagnosed the type of injury and therefore allowed adequate planning and decision making between non-surgical treatment, neurolysis or nerve reconstruction. We believe that MR-neurography is an emerging tool for nerve surgeons to improve the treatment of nerve injuries. Conclusions: MR-neurography delivers decisive information on the nerve lesion and helps to identify the necessity to operate and the correct surgical treatment.