Electrical stimulation for promoting peripheral nerve regeneration

The peripheral nervous system has the intrinsic capacity to regenerate axons into target tissues, and peripheral nerves severely damaged or transected can be reconstructed by microsurgical techniques. The aim of peripheral nerve surgery is to pave way for fast and most possible thorough functional recovery. However, full functional recovery is rarely seen and several reasons for this have already been discovered. Based on these discoveries, therapeutic strategies supplementary to nerve microsurgery have been conceived with electrical stimulation of the denervated muscles or the proximal nerve stump or reconstructed area itself being among them. This chapter shortly describes the commonly accepted reasons for incomplete functional recovery and reviews the effects of varying electrical stimulation paradigms on the essentials for axonal regeneration and functional target reinnervation. We conclude the chapter with promising examples where electrical stimulation did already demonstrate to accelerate and increase functional recovery in the clinic.