Surgery to release hand contractures in paralized arm

[joanincarolina]

My 60 year old friend is 7 years post hemorrhagic basilar artery bleed. She has paralysis on one side of her body. Therapy has enabled her to walk short distances with a brace on affected side but her affected arm is not functional, neither is the same side shoulder which is sloped.She wears a hand/wrist brace most of the time to keep hand contractures loose. I have read some orthopedic articles about surgery to release tendons and relieve contractures but she has no motor control at all in that arm/hand.My question is what would be the gain to do this surgery in a non-functional arm? Thank you.

[Staswiz1976]

My husband 38 yrs. old suffered several strokes 3 years ago,  he was very very sick after a foot surgery did not heal and went sepsis and his whole immune system went haywire causing several strokes and a lesion on his spine.  He was not expected to make it.  However, he did survive and is paralyzed and unable to walk.  He has been working out and doing physical therapy for 18 months now and has regained a lot more movement in his upper body.  His hands and fingers are contracted now and he had 2 rounds of botox injections  in the last 3 months.  We are now going to go to a surgeon and possibly look into surgery on his hand/ fingers.  Has anyone ever gone through this surgery?   Can u tell me if it was successful for you.  I'm just looking for any kind of feedback.  Thank you for reading this.

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[oc1dean]

The best way to explain this is that there are normally two set of muscles controlling joint movement. Example, bicep lifts the lower arm, triceps staightens the arm but inorder to do that the bicep needs to be able to relax. Once a contracture has set in straightening the arm out becomes impossible. Surgery can release the contracture but you would have to ask the doctor  whether both the agonist and antagonist muscles will still work. In my case my doctor mentioned snipping my tendons controlling my toe flexors but i decided against that because it was a permanent fix that would never allow me to ever get toe flexion again, this is different than tendon reattachment.  The best course of action would be to control the spasticity thru other means and prevent the contractures from occurring in the first place.
Good luck,
Dean