Brachial Plexus Injury – Associated Injuries

Transcript

Because brachial pleuxs injuries result from severe trauma, a patient being thrown from a motorcycle, a severe car accident, there often are associated injuries to the rest of the body. The patient may have injury to the chest, pneumothorax, they may have associated head injuries, they can even have spinal injuries. And in fact, this is often why brachial plexus injuries are not initially recognized. There are so many life-threatening injuries that must be addressed in the initial hospitalization that by the time the patient is stabilized and safe or discharged from the hospital, they begin to discover the less life-threatening injuries of which your brachial plexus injury is one. Oftentimes the patient who suffers a severe brachial plexus injury will also suffer severe neuropathic pain. This would be pain that radiates down into the arm that can be throbbing, burning or electricity-like shooting pains into the limb. It is important for a patient who suffers this type of severe pain to be referred to a pain management specialist. There are a number of different medications that can be trialed. Sometimes a stimulator is of use and sometimes surgery to perform a lesion within the spinal cord to eliminate this pain is indicated. But pain is often an important part of this entity, as is undertaken to restore function to the limb in a brachial plexus injury will often result in reduction of that pain over time.