United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

and it says "The pectoralis major muscle was identified and was noted to have a contracture." Does anyone know what this means?

Desiree

p.s. If this shows up twice I apologize. I had logged on, then a while later tried to post this message and before I realized it, I was being considered a "guest" and my post isn't showing right away. So I logged back on and started all over. What a dizz brain.

Hiya

I looked it up on dictionary.com and heres what it said........

con·trac·ture (kn-trkchr)
n.
1. An abnormal, often permanent shortening, as of muscle or scar tissue, that results in distortion or deformity, especially of a joint of the body.
2. A deformity resulting from a contracture.

Hope this helps.

It might be worth going to http://www.google.com and typing "contracture". You'll be amazed how much stuff is out there.

Marc

Try this.......

http://umm.drkoop.com/conditions/ency/a ... 003185.htm

As I said though.....try Google. There's tons of info.

Hi dezarae....

Here's how I understand it....

There are two opposing sides to a muscle...
one stretches and one contracts..

so if you look at your elbow and bring it in to your body - you will see that the inside contracts in and the outside stretches - they work in unison - not one side stronger than the other - they balance each other out.

Now.... let's say the side that stretches is very weak, then the side that contracts doesn't have enough power to keep it from stopping to contract.... there's a muscle imbalance. The side that is contracting just keeps on contracting and it will do that (if nothing stops it from doing this) until it has contracted to the point where it can no longer contract because it's at it's contracted limit.

With our kids - muscle imbalances are common because of how the nerves grow in, some work , some don't. There are so many muscles that work with and around the shoulder that many of them just get contracted and cause positioning issues, etc.

So let's go back to the elbow.... you can tell when a child has an elbow contracture easily because they cannot straight out their arm - it feels like something is stopping it. There are two ways around it. You can manually stretch it with fascia release ( a lot of it) or with a dynamic splint (puts pressure into the muscle to stretch it) OR you can surgically release it by cutting some sort of line into it (there are all different kinds of release techniques I understand)

What has to be done depends on how serious the contracture is.

In the case of the elbow - a dynamic splint usually works pretty well and if it doesn't stop the process, then they do surgery. In the case of the shoulder - well this is a whole different situation because there are so many muscles involved - that surgical releases are done for that.

When they do the mod quad (muscle & tendon releases and transfers) they are correcting the whole imbalance by releasing the contractures and giving strength to the once weak side by doing a muscle transfer (moving a strong muscle to work in place of the weaker one).

When pecs are tight they can see it because the child is using their chest muscles to move their arms and sometimes the neck gets involved too. Once Maia had the pecs release she stopped bowing her chest up to raise her arm.

So I hope that made sense.... ask more questions ok?
-francine

That's what I said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (sort of!!!)

Yes - but I talk more than you!

Well you are a woman!!!!!!!!! My God you lot can talk.........I call up my mates and the conversation goes......>>

"Hello mate, Pub....Great see you at 8, bye" THE END.

A woman calls her friends and the telephone company have to flick the auxillary power switch to prevent melt down!!!!!!!!!

********MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE********

Hi, Dezarae. The definition that Marc posted --
"An abnormal, often permanent shortening, as of muscle ..." -- best describes the way Nicole's PT stated it to me when I asked her. Also, when I asked her if Nicole had any contractures she was able to show me the answer b/c while Nicole has limitations with AROM, we're able to do full range in all of her PROM exercises. The PT said that if there's a contracture, then you won't be able to do the full stretch passively. So, if you can do all the PROM exercises to the full range, then there aren't any contractures (even though you can't necessarily actively achieve full range). Now, I'd like to add that this is the way our PT, whose opinion I value, explained it to us. I'm not sure if this is exactly the same explanation as Francine's soooo, now what I'm going to tell you is that since you saw it in your son's surgery notes, the best thing to do is to contact your son's surgeon and findout exactly what HE means by a contracture since there might be a slight variation in the ineterpretation of the meaning. While it's good to get input from others here, I feel that the best explanation comes from the author. I hope that makes sense. Please share what you findout. Thanks. -Tina