Twenty years in brachial plexus surgery

Brachial plexus surgery has been performed since the first half of our century, but initially the procedure was a rudimentary technique. Results were very poor, in fact, because of insufficient knowledge of the anatomy of the brachial plexus, of the pathophysiology of nerve regeneration and because of inadequate means of diagnosis and lack of modern sophisticated surgical equipment. Because of the poor results, a group of outstanding orthopedic surgeons wrote, in the sixties, an official agreement stating that brachial plexus surgery was useless and should be abandoned. Nevertheless, even though obstetrical palsies were on the decline due to the increase in Cesarean sections, the need for brachial plexus surgery was on the rise with the dramatic increase in the number of car and motorcycle accidents.