The Experimental Study Of Nerve Blast Injury In The Maxillofacial And Neck Region

With the development of armament, the explosive weapon was applied more often than ever in the war, and the blast injury became the majority of war wounds. The maxillofacial region was exposed and not easy to be protected in usual. As a result, the maxillofacial war injury was reported high incidence rate in all the past wars, and the responsible research was all along an important item in the field of battle surgery. The nerves were distributed intensively in the head and neck region and involved inevitably in the blast injury of this part. In particular, the facial nerve was prone to facial paralysis after injury, which had great effect on the patient's physiologic and mental health. The treatment of facial nerve firearm injury was difficult because of the wide damage coverage, contamination of wounds and complicated anatomy in the facial region. The previous study was mainly concentrated on gunshot injury. However, the facial nerve blast injury is different from the gunshot injury for the different wounding causes. Therefore, it is necessary to research the blast injury of nerves in the facial region, especially the facial nerve blast injury. The past reports on peripheral blast injury were mainly according to clinicalDepartment of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery .experience to analyze the wound types and reasons in wars or explosive accidents, in which little prospective research had been undertaken. And this study was a prospectively randomized, controlled animal study to observe the feature of the nerve blast injury in the maxillofacial region as well as the treatment.1. The establishment of an animal model on facial nerve blast injuryAn animal model of blast-fragment combined injuries was designed and founded to imitate the facial nerve injury of explosion. The local wound of different explosive condition was compared in detail to explore the appropriate pattern for the research of facial nerve injury and recovery. The features between gunshot and blast nerve injury were also compared in this part as well.2. The pathology of the nerve blast injury in the maxillofacial and cervical regionThe pathology of facial nerve blast injury was observed and the recovering process of facial nerve was compared to the process of mandibular and vagus nerve to analyze the difference of wounding effect caused by the different nervous types and local anatomy.3. The influence of vagal injury in acute cardiorespiratory responses to blast exposureThe influence of vagal injury in acute response to blast exposure was analyzed by the prospectively randomized animal study, and our data implicates that the vagus nerve play an important role in the acute cardiorespiratory responses such as traumatic shock seen immediately after blast injury.4. The treatment of facial nerve blast injuryTwo experiments was designed to investigate the possible early management of facial nerve blast injury. Repairing the facial blast wounds or depression of the facial nerve at the early stage after injury could promote the recovery of the facial nerves.Department of Oral &. Maxillofacial SurgeryIn summary, an animal model was designed and established in this study to imitate the real facial nerve blast injury. The blast injury of nerves in the maxillofacial and cervical region was observed and compared among them. And the early treatment of facial nerve blast injury was preliminarily studied.