Classification of peripheral nerve injuries

Making a verified (correct) diagnosis is key in the dialogue between the patient and the attending physician. A correctly formulated diagnosis, reflecting information about the underlying and concomitant diseases, can not only influence the tactics of the treatment process, but also predetermine the outcome of administrative and legal conflict situations. The lack of unification of diagnostic concepts and unified approaches to the formulation of a diagnosis leads to disagreement among medical specialists and, as a result, to a decrease in the quality of treatment of patients with peripheral nerve injuries. One of the first attempts to classify injuries of peripheral nerves, which became widespread, was the morphofunctional classification of nerve injuries by the English orthopedist Sir Herbert Seddon in 1942. Having undergone minor changes under the authorship of Sir Sydney Sunderland in 1951, it is employed in the formulation of diagnoses to this day. Attempts by modern Russian scientists and specialists to streamline ideas about the features of peripheral nerve injuries are reduced to rethinking and supplementing the classification of nerve injuries proposed by Aleksandr Nikiforovich Solomin in 1975. The simultaneous use of several classifications of peripheral nerve injuries in the daily practice of a specialist can lead to errors in providing assistance to patients at different stages of treatment and to the risk of choosing the wrong treatment tactics. Based on the existing classifications, taking into account the experience gained in the treatment of patients with peripheral nerve injuries in peacetime and wartime, in the aspect of current trends towards unity and unification of diagnostic concepts, our team of authors developed and proposed for use a modern classification of peripheral nerve injuries.