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

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