your muscles are anchored to bone through ligaments and tendons. If you undergo an amputation, how do the muscles react to no longer having that anchoring point?

Question

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

Answer 1

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.