[Surgical rehabilitation of the upper limbs after traumatic tetraplegia]

Patients with a cervical spinal cord injury experience a complete paralysis of their lower limbs and a partial paralysis of their upper limbs associated with a dramatic decrease of upper limbs function. Twenty years ago, surgical rehabilitation of their upper limbs started to develop, based mainly on tendon transfer procedures. We report a consecutive series of 69 such patients operated in the past 12 years, amounting to 188 rehabilitation procedures on their upper limbs. Surgery was beneficial in all cases, there was no case of functional loss, and the patients were mostly satisfied with the procedures.