Do the muscles just sit bunched up and floppy in your limb or are there ways they anchor it to new points in surgery?
In: Biology
In the context of a “Ye Olde” amputation you just took your chances, and muscles would retract (often painfully). In a modern context efforts are made to create a functional “stump” which means anchoring muscles to the bone again to keep them from retracting, and to help with future prosthesis. The process often used is called “myodesis” which just means that the muscle is anchored to the living tissue around all bones (periosteum) or the structure of the bone itself. The muscle is often used as padding for future prosthetic devices, since you don’t want the thing resting directly on the bone.
As for the how… you drill holes into the bone, and sutures (often very thin wires) are used to anchor the muscle into those holes. Ideally nerves are carefully threaded in some approximation of where they used to be, so control over the muscle is retained, and physical therapy helps to minimize the chances of the muscles breaking down and weakening (atrophy) or retracting painfully. It’s a complex procedure and not the 4-6 minute “cut and run” of the pre-anesthetic days.
edit: sp
Just a small point of clarification: ligaments connect bone to bone, and tendons connect muscle to bone (exceptions apply, such as tendons connecting to your eye)
The muscles generally just sit there and atrophy (shrink) through non-use. A muscle doesn’t necessarily need to be attached at both ends. Look at your tongue, for example.
I just had a total separation of my supraspinatus muscle from my humerus. Basically a shoulder muscle popped off the bone and was lying loose in my upper arm. Since it still had a blood supply at the bottom (thankfully) it could and was reattached. But for the month it was loose, it did start to shrivel a bit, was painful, and I was unable to lie on that side at all. You could feel it loose underneath though, and my surgeon said that some people opt not to have the surgery; in that case, there is weakness and pain in the shoulder making it difficult to raise the arm; there is limited range of motion in the shoulder; there is the wasting of the muscle itself, and also instability in the shoulder joint which can increase the risk of shoulder dislocation. Scar tissue forms in the gap between the tendon and bone. All reasons to go all-in on the surgery.
When my dads tendon in his knee snapped his knee cap was sitting about 4 inches above his knee, but they were able to fix it
“your muscles are anchored to bone through ligaments and tendons”
I think only tendons connect muscle to bone, ligaments connect bone to bone.
Latest Answers