United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Hello, My daughter Grace is 2 years old and has had primary and mod quad surgeries. she still has some weakness in her wrist extendors. Is there some excercises or therapy activities that we can do to improve this weakness? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

Just bringing this topic back to the front. Any help would be appreciated

We have been using TES and NMES to help my daughter's wrist extensors. It does seem to be helping. Her doctor said that when she is older and can be an active participant in therapy that she may need a tendon transfer to help being she has a hard time opening her hand fully. Hope this helps.

Karen,

I always get extension and flexion mixed up. One is lifting up the hand at the wrist and the other is holding the hand down. Which is it in this case? Then maybe we can all give some suggestions.

I presume she can extend it passively, just not actively?

Nancy

Hi, Grace can actively both flex her hand up at the wrist and also extend her hand down at the wrist, but this is somewhat weaker. I am not sure either what the Dr's mean by wrist extensors. From vieweing our video, the TCH dr's just noted that she seemed to have weak wrist extensors and that is why I posted this question. Does that make sense? The only thing we notice at home is that she still holds her wrist down in the "waiter's tip" position sometimes and when she is crawling she holds her wrist in almost a backward position with her thumb bent in under her hand.

Karen,

I think you have flexion and extension of the wrist mixed up? If the hand is out, palm down, flexion is moving the wrist down, extension is raising the wrist. This site has very good animations to help understand all the directions of movements:

http://www.exrx.net/Articulations/Wrist.html

Sorry I don't have any suggestions for strengthening the wrist extensors.

Kate