Surgery Developed To Give Quadriplegic Patients The Use Of Their Hands And Arms

Dominique Tremblay and Élie Boghossian, plastic surgeons at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital (MRH) and researchers at Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Medicine, have developed a new approach to nerve transfer that consists of moving certain healthy nerves from eligible patients to an inactive nerve, in order to reanimate the muscles of their hands and arms that were no longer functioning.

This was achieved in the case of a young quadriplegic patient, Ms. Jeanne Carrière, who regained the use of her arms and hands with this new surgical technique.

“In the quadriplegic patient, we replace the nerve impulses of a nerve that does not work with a nerve that still works. With time and rehabilitation, the nerve impulse is reformed, and the use of the hands and arms gradually returns,” explained Dr. Tremblay – also head of the division of plastic surgery at UdeM – about this great innovation in surgery.

Over the past two years, as part of a development phase, more than a dozen patients have undergone this type of reconstruction at the MRH and all these procedures have been successful. All patients’ rehabilitation steps were done in close collaboration with the Institut de réadaptation Gingras-Lindsay-de-Montréal. On the strength of these successes, the CIUSSS-EMTL is now able to end the development phase and offer this type of intervention to all patients who could benefit from it.

A leader in plastic surgery, the MRH recently obtained designation from the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services, which identifies this establishment as unique in Quebec in carrying out vascularized composite allotransplantations, mainly facial transplants and upper limb (arm) transplants.