Femoral nerve injuries are devastating injuries that lead to paralysis of the quadriceps muscles, weakening knee extension to prohibit ambulation. We report a devastating case of electrical injury-induced femoral neuropathy, where no apparent site of nerve disruption can be identified, thus inhibiting the traditional choices of nerve reconstruction such as nerve repair, grafting, or transfer. Concomitant spinal cord injury resulted in spastic myopathy of the antagonist muscles that further restricted knee extension. Our strategy was to perform (1) supercharge end-to-side technique (SETS) to augment the function of target muscles and (2) fractional tendon lengthening to release the spastic muscles. Dramatic postoperative improvement in passive and active range of motion highlights the effectiveness of this strategy to manage partial femoral nerve injuries.
Keywords: electrical injury; end to side nerve transfer; femoral nerve; obturator to femoral nerve; supercharge.
The Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ).