[Surgical rehabilitation procedures of the upper limbs in tetraplegic patients].

Cervical spinal cord injuries represent about 40% of all spinal cord lesions. In addition to the complete paralysis of the lower limbs they induce a dramatic decrease of upper limb function. Surgical rehabilitation of the upper limbs, based mainly on tendon transposition procedures, was advocated by only few surgeons more than thirty years ago and has developed in recent years in view of their satisfactory results. We report a consecutive series of 69 tetraplegic patients operated during the past twelve years, amounting to 188 rehabilitation procedures on their upper limbs. Our results indicate that surgery was beneficial in all cases. There was no case of functional loss and the patients were mostly satisfied with the procedures.