If nerves can't heal themselves how do surgeons reattach/transplant limbs and have them still function?

If nerves can't heal themselves how do surgeons reattach/transplant limbs and have them still function?

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While I know some nerves can, and you can stimulate some nerves to grow, I also know a re-attached limb never works quite as well again.

Though I too am curious as to the procedures involved, so I'll bump ya one, before I just google it.

pieces of clothing or electric cables don't heal themselves but we can reattach them.
Why does this surprise you?

Aye, ya never get 100% nerve functionality back.

The procedure is the same as Microvascular Anastomosis:
youtube.com/watch?v=g8KP2gxMyz4 (gore warning)

In that you just stretch and suture major nerves, as you do major blood vessels, as best you can, and hope for the best. It only works with near perfectly severed limbs kept on ice, but even fingertips rarely get all their feeling back, in addition to suffering from the pain of "ghost tingles". Still, better than nothing.

There are experimental procedures in the works for repairing nerve axons based on invertebrate nerve regrowth, but the results are mixed, and I dunno if it's yet been tried on a human subject:

sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120203092423.htm

I don't think he meant to come off as one of these anti-intellectuals who toss words such as "scientism" around, but was just curious as to how it is done.

Rehab takes awhile, but while the nerve signals are never what they were, the brain adapts to the diminished input, and over years, you can get near perfect nerve control again - just, yeah, never quite 100%, and how close depends on the amount of irreparable nerve damage done and brain elasticity. (Children, for instance, tend to recover better than adults.)

peripheral nerves can regenerate, and they grow at about 1mm/day.

Cell bodies and axons within the CNS dont regenerate, they just die when injured.

All nerves can heal themselves.
The trouble is nerves in tight spaces, the spine and whatnot, usually heal wrong (because they're trying to heal as if they weren't in a tight space.
Nerves that aren't in a tight space heal fine.
Nerves that are in semi-tight spaces usually heal passably (though not spatially efficiently).

>to heal as if

Are you saying that the inflammation of the healing nerve causes the injury to never fully heal? Why would the body sabotage itself like that?

Are you suggesting that doctors weld and solder the nerves back one by one? Because I'm pretty sure they don't.

Because nerves can heal, like every living cells.