Peripheral-nerve rerouting procedures have been used with significant success to restore significant function after Spinal Column Injury. Often with this procedure, peripheral nerves (i.e., those outside of the spinal cord and brain) emanating from the cord above the injury site are surgically rerouted and connected to those below the injury site. This reestablishes a functional neuronal connection from the brain to previously dormant muscle or sensory systems.

Dr. Shaocheng Zhang (Shanghai, China), has rerouted peripheral nerves to restore function in hundreds of patients with SCI, restoring function to the specific functions that the target nerves serve (e.g., leg muscle function, bladder and bowel control, sensation, etc).  For example, the rerouted nerve could be connected to a nerve that controls urination, or it could be reconnected to nerve that controls upper leg muscles.

A 7-year old michigan Michigan girl with spina bifida is undergoing a procedure at Beaumont Hospitals which, if it works, it will give her the ability to pee-on-command by scratching her thigh.  The operation involves cutting open a spot on the spine and sewing an essentially dead nerve from the bladder to an active nerve from the thigh with a single hair-thin stitch.  The hope is that the nerve, growing at a millimeter a day, will take a span of 6 to 18 months to grow back and then reactivate into a new nerve.

Amazingly, early forms of this technique were tried over a hundred years ago.  Dr. Basil Kilvington (Melbourne, Australia) in 1906 attempted to restore bladder function in three dogs connecting sacral and lumbar nerve roots (Br Med J April 27, 1907). Based on these animal experiments, which had marginal results, as well as research using cadavers, he attempted this crossover surgery in a 40-year-old man, who six years previously had sustained a T11-12 injury after falling from a tree, but unfortunately due to scar formation he was unable to continue.