Restoration and protection of brachial plexus injury： hot topics in the last decade

Brachial plexus injury is frequently induced by injuries, accidents or birth trauma. Upper limb function may be partially or totally lost after injury, or left permanently disabled. With the de- velopment of various medical technologies, different types of interventions are used, but their effectiveness is wide ranging. Many repair methods have phasic characteristics, i.e., repairs are done in different phases. This study explored research progress and hot topic methods for pro- tection after brachial plexus injury, by analyzing 1,797 articles concerning the repair of brachial plexus injuries, published between 2004 and 2013 and indexed by the Science Citation Index database. Results revealed that there are many methods used to repair brachial plexus injury, and their effects are varied. Intervention methods include nerve transfer surgery, electrical stimula- tion, cell transplantation, neurotrophic factor therapy and drug treatment. Therapeutic methods in this field change according to the hot topic of research.     

Sciatic nerve injury repair： a visualized analysis of research fronts and development trends

A total of 3,446 publications regarding sciatic nerve injury repair and protection indexed by Web of Science during 2000–2004 were used for a detailed analysis of temporal-spatial distribution characteristics. Reference co-citation networks of the 100 top-cited publications as per the number of total citations were created using the Web of Science database and the information visualization tool, CiteSpaceIII. The key words that showed high frequency in these publications were included for analyzing the research fronts and development trends for sciatic nerve injury repair and protection. Through word frequency trend analysis, studies on bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells, adipose-derived stem cells, and skeletal muscle-derived multipotent stem cells combined with tissue-engineered scaffold material will become the forefronts in the field of sciatic nerve injury repair and protection in the near future.