brachial plexitis
 

Hi I had surgery to repair a post tibial tendon repair on th 29th of May, I came out of surgery fine but a few hours later in the hospital woke up with severe neck pain into my left arm that was a 10+ the morphine drip for my foot didn't even touch it. Then several hours later left with paralysis in arm from elbow to shoulder. They diagnosed me with brachial plexitis or parsonage turner syndrome, it has been 16 days and still can't use my arm anybody else have this or know anything about it?

That does sound painful inflsrv, and although I get a lot of pain in that region, I'm sure my problems are coming from my shoulder, and not obviously even similar to what you're going through.


I did however want to welcome you to NeuroTalk, and I hope you get the answers that you seek.

HI,

It might not be exactly the same thing but you may want to check out the TOS forum which is brachial plexus oriented.

Here is the link

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum24.html

I wonder if perhaps during your surgery they had your neck stretched in a bad way.

Thanks for your response, I was not told that I wa stretched anyway and feel confident that if I was the doc would have told me. will check out TOS. Went to PT today and boy is my shoulder blade on left side sore, she said it could be a year till I'm 100% strength back crazy foot surgery gone bad! Could I have a cerviacl herniated Disc and have no pain after 2 days and no pain when I move now?

Hi,

You certainly could have a herniated disc and the doc should schedule a series of x-rays and an MRI, maybe even an MRA.

I believe we had a member go in for some sort of surgery and came out with TOS. It more how they positioned your arm and neck and whether the brachial plexus was crushed under the first rib collarbone area.

Please be very very careful with PT. Most PT people are not experienced with brachial plexus injuries and may have you doing things that are too aggressive.

And be careful about a winged scapula with your shoulder.

Please check out the stickies at the top of the TOS forum for links and information.


Good luck!

Hey thanks for the warning! I have had 2 MRI's and a EMG study all saying it is brachial plexitis. The physical therapist has me doing range of motion exerercises, I guess. I do not have any pain only paralysis from elbow to left shoulder so I assume it is just time waiting for nerve to repair I have read it takes an average of 3 to 4 mos and in extreme cases 2 years lets hope not that!

I am new to this sight and just came across this entry. I have Parsonage Turner Syndrome. This is the first time in 18 years I have found another person with that diagnosis. Mine started 3 weeks after the birth of my first child and a day after I spent 3 days and 2 nights at the hospital with him when he was hospitalized for that time. I brought him to bed at 3 a.m. to nurse him, put him back in the cradle at 5 a.m. and was fine then. By 6 am I was dreaming of extreme pain, by 7 I was wide awake with pain starting in the neck/upper back and running down and out my finger tips. i had no use of my right arm. For over a week I had to have someone hold him when I nursed on the right side and to pick him up and carry him. After the week I still could not hold him on the right side but found other ways to work things.

This was missed diagnosised for a few months. An EMG and the physiartist who did it finally figured it out. I had nine months of 3/week PT - it was 1989/1990. I was told I would get about 70% use back if I worked very hard and that is about what I have. I do still have pain from it. You need to learn what movements arer bad for it and try to avoid them when you can.

I have found very few doctors who have heard of it and I have never found one who has actually treated it before. I live in a major metrpolitan area and have seen neurologists and/or physiatrist from 4 different teaching hospitals.
You can tell if they are familiar with it when they get excited when they see it.

The PT definately helped me. The PT and the physiatrist were not sure how to best treat it. We did a lot of therapy in the water. I had severe scapular winging that popped out and crossed over my spine. One of the things I think helped was they would tape it down so that the scapula could not pop out as far. A lot of what we did was trial and error. The hospital the PT worked with had nothing in their library on. Using medline it took 4 months to get any info, and 3 of them were from Belgium.

I wish you luck and hope that yours improves or is something else.

Parsonage Turner Syndrome
 

Hi,

This is my first time on this site. I am a 20 year old male division one athlete and i have had parsonage turner syndrome for over two years. I have had an MRI, blood test, CT scan, multiple cortozone shots, nerve conduction tests. All the testing has pointed to parsonage turner syndrome. The pain now is not as bad as it has been in the past, but i am taking nerontin which helps, however; i still have a winging scapula. I did some research and i found that 75% of people with PTS heal within 2 years, so i am a little concerned that mabye i dont actually have PTS (it have been over 2 years). Im starting to feel unsure about that whole situtaion. Does anyone have a similar story?