Nerve Regeneration essays

Nerve Regeneration essays Topic: New ways to aid in nerve regeneration. Specific Purpose: To inform the audience about news techniques and mechanisms that aid in nerve regeneration. Central Idea Statement: The new techniques for nerve regeneration involving magnetic, electrical, and chemical mechanisms look very promising. I. The site is rather common: someone in a wheel chair unable to use their lower body, or worse, unable to function from their neck down because of an accident. You may even know one of these people. They all have one thing in common: spinal nerve injury. To the majority of us, one of the more famous and recent cases involving spinal trauma is that of Christopher Reeve, known to most of us as Superman. Reeve was riding his horse when he fell off, landed on the back of his head and twisted his neck. His spine was damaged near the second cervical vertebrae; that being two vertebrae away from the base of the skull. He states that after his accident he saw a handbook written in 1990 that "didn't even mention anyone higher than [the fourth cervical vertebrae] because 70 percent of them didn't live longer than five days. I am very lucky my injury happened at a time when treatment and surgery had improved." Dr. Cotman from UCI, who worked with Reeve says that Reeve remains optimistic t hat a cure is only a few million dollars away. II. Prior to the end of the Second World War, if a person survived a severe spinal cord injury, the injury still usually resulted in their early death. This was because of complications that accompanied the injury, such as infections to the kidneys and lungs. Though the development of new antibiotics has greatly improved life expectancy, until recently medical science had not been able to restore nerve function. III. According to researchers at the University of Alabama using data from the regional SCI Centers, there are 7,800 traumatic spinal cord injuries each year in the US. Yet these numbers do not ...