Sciatic nerve graft at sciatic notch. Question about recovery.

Posted by drewduffy1 @drewduffy1, 1 day ago

Hi there I'm brand new to this group. I'm going to give you the full story of what has happened to me. I am in a hospital in New York City I'm still in the acute rehab portion. Approximately 4 weeks ago I had a bilateral hip replacement.. so both hips replaced at the same time in the same operation. As far as the hips themselves the surgery went fine. I experienced no pain in my hips following the surgery. However when I came out of recovery I noticed that I did not feel my foot whatsoever and I could not move it, my right foot. After some investigation what we found out was that my orthopedic surgeon accidentally during the surgery put a screw part of the sciatic nerve right around the sciatic notch. 4 days after the surgery following MRIS etc, my surgeon along with a neurosurgeon went back in and removed the screw and performed a nerve graft to repair the sciatic nerve damage again near the sciatic notch. They used a piece of nerve from around my ankle that they said was not used very often.
So it has now been about 4 weeks since that surgery I still have no feeling in my foot or any use of it or my ankle at all. I do have full use of my calf and my quads. My hamstring I'm not really sure yet whether that was effected. It is very weak but I was bed bound for quite some time before my hip surgery so it's not clear yet whether that's just due to normal weakness or due to the damage to the sciatic nerve. An addition I have a numb strip from my ankle up to my hip that is only about a half an inch wide that roughly follows the IT band I believe. That's just to give you a reference to where it is it doesn't have anything to do with the IT band. So it's on the bottom right hand portion of my leg.
Now I know it takes a very long time for nerves to regenerate. Especially since I'm a very tall person. I'm 6'3. So from what I understand the nerve has to regenerate all the way from my sciatic notch all the way down to my foot and so we're looking at 2 years probably.
That brings me to I question I am not any kind of doctor I'm just a regular patient that's done a little bit of research. I am curious from people here with experience as to what percentage of adults with a similar entry that got treated within the same amount of time (4 days) see meaningful recovery of sensation and/or functionality at all. I do know that EMGs will help answer that question for myself individually. I'm due for my first one in about 10 days. But I wonder if somebody could give me a general idea of the percentage of people that recover, that would be very helpful.

Thank you so much.

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Hello @drewduffy1, Welcome to Connect. I know it must be a little scary just thinking about the recovery time involved with nerve repair surgery. I'm guessing you read about the nerve grows at a rate of about an inch a month - https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/surgical-repair-nerve. While you wait for members with experience to respond, I did a search of Connect using "nerve repair surgery recovery time" and thought you might like to scan through the related member discussions and comments. Here are the search results with links to the discussions and comments - https://connect.mayoclinic.org/search/.

Hopefully you will get some answers following your upcoming EMGs.

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