There is definately a very good chance of an acceptable outcome from surgery although I have no idea what the odds are. . . I think I was quoted 75/25
I suffered painful and quite restrictive damage to my left arm all thanks to a severe and extreme storm that resulted in a tornado. I wont bore you will all the details but the outcome for me was a damaged dominant left arm.
It was kinda checked over the following day but as I had some good (but highly painful) movement, I was sent away with a compression bandage. As time passed the pain stayed (huge black bruises) and although some swelling reduced, I was still unable to write, but as I'm sort of ambidextrous and can write with my right (albeit slow and a tad scrawly) not much was offered to help me. Then gradually neves would fire and my arm would jump. Eventually some fingers went numb and I was sent for conductive nerve tests. The outcome of that was my Ulnar Nerve, probably at the swollen elbow, needed surgery and I was sent for x-rays. Not much showed up (I'll sware the positions were all wrong) so I was sent for CT scans. Now those DID show things were not right and surgery was arranged.
Spare softish bone type tissue was removed from all around the elbow and the ulnar nerve transposed to another part of the elbow.
The surgery results once the swelling had gone down were fantastic in that I had reasonably good arm movement and acceptable weight lifing ability, BUT the ulnar nerve was too damaged to respond well to transposition and I still have an erratic left hand with two numb fingers.
So as you can see from my experience, although the nerve surgery failed, the bone surgery left me with a reasonably functioning arm. From my experience of this rare condition, I tend to think that much can be done to sort the problems out and it was just bad luck for me that my ulnar nerve was trapped for so long before the surgeon actually got to it.
My operation was in 2004 and I have no sign of the bone problem returning. I am sure that in those 9 years something would have shown up by now if it was going to.
I wish your son well and his surgeon steady sure eyes and hands.
