A promising new technique involving cadaver nerves is helping to rehabilitate limbs and save them from amputation, the Wall Street Journal reports.

More than 300,000 Americans annually suffer Injuries involving the peripheral nerves in their arms, legs, hands and feet. While combat is a major cause, car crashes and accidents with knives or other tools also produce similar injuries.

Previously, limbs injured in this way often could not be saved. If they could, it was usually through a type of nerve repair that would take a healthy nerve from another area on the patient’s body, such as the back of the ankle. But the downside was that that area would then be forever numb.