United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Hello everyone,

I am new here and my daughter has BPI to her left arm. We did not learn exactly what was wrong with her until she was about 6 months old. She is now 2 and will soon be 3 in Aug. The question that I had is what is mod quad? I never heard of it before and I see it mentioned alot on the forum. Also, at what age do doctors usually perform surgeries to correct nerve damage? My daughter is soon to be 3 is it too late for her? Any other advice that you might have would really be appreciated. I want to see my baby live out her dreams. It saddens me to know what happened to her could have been prevented. But it makes me angry when I think back to when she was born and the doctors kept telling me she would be o.k. They were telling me that nature would heal it in time. Then I found out that Erb's Palsy was muchh more serious than what they had told me. If anyone responds it would be really helpful to me and my little girl and also does anyone have any fun exercises that they do with their child? Let me know. I live in Atlanta Ga. If there is anyone in the forum that lives here let me know.

Hey! I don't know what Mod quad is yet. I do know that most surgeries are done before the child's first birthday if there is not much improvement when they are 4 to 6 months old. There is a Dr. that I found on this site that is in the Atlanta area. I will email you his info. There is also a place on this site that suggests fun exercises to do with your child.
Dena

Hi Dylecia,

You must feel somewhat lost - all new words we are using - surgeries you don't understand. I remember how I felt when I first came here...didn't know what the heck anyone was talking about and quite honestly I was to scared to as well!

Last year we created a whole bunch of pages to help new parents through the grind - it's all found on http://ubpn.org/awareness - we did it in honor of Awareness Week which is in October. If you go in there and click on Birth Injuries it'll all be there. The glossary will be helpful as well as the many other pages.

About the surgeries.....

The first surgery they may to do an a child is called primary surgery. They do this on infants with severe injuries (those who don't get back enough function - so they know for sure that something inside is ripped or pulled out). They go in and explore what's wrong and then do nerve grafting - they take nerve from a leg or from behind the ear and sew it in to give a child more nerve "juice".

The other surgeries are called secondary surgeries. These are things that they do to give the child more range of motion, more function, and also things they do to protect the shoulder joint or keep it from becoming too deformed, and repairing a problem that may arise. Shoulder joints can become deformed from this injury because the child doesn't move their arms in full range. There's probably about a dozen (or less) or so of these secondary types of surgeries. Mod Quad is the name one hospital (TCH) has given to a secondary surgery that is done to correct limited range of motion and contractures (muscles that get too tight) - they do four things in it (quad). Usually after the mod quad children can raise their arms up and over their heads (without involving swinging the arm up and curving their chests or stressing their necks). The full description of this is found on the site for Texas Childrens Hospital www.texaschildrenshospital.org (Patient Care Center, Select Care Center, Brachial Plexus).

Personally - I think it's a good thing to get a couple of opinions - and I see that a doctor in Georgia has been suggested... remember that the list does not mean that the doctor is good or bad - you will have to research that yourself and find someone who gives you a gut feeling that he/she is the right person with the right information. Information (as you have already experienced) is hard to get with this injury for some reason.

So my best advice to you is to read as much as you can - educate yourself about what it is and what can be done, research the doctors and come up with a plan. You must be your child's advocate - especially with this injury.

And keep on asking questions on here....

take care,
francine

http://www.injurednewborn.com/maia/homepage.html