The long term functional consequences of peripheral nerve injuries are notoriously unpredictable. We hypothesized that considering the individual regrowth of the elementary components of a nerve (the neurites) rather than the global regeneration of the organ could lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms of nerve repair. We postulated that the regrowth of any individual neurite can be defined in terms of its influence on recovery, the three main possibilities being valid, neutral and invalid regrowth. We have designed a probability model describing the prospects of regrowth for nerve composed of several types of fibers. This model is being tested in pre-determined situations to judge its validity. We found that possible variations in the outcome of nerve injuries could be explained by a parsimonious hypothesis: the randomness of regrowth.
