This retrospective study asks whether performing targeted muscle reinnervation at the time of major upper-extremity amputation reduces phantom and residual limb pain. Sixteen early TMR patients were compared against 55 benchmark amputees without TMR using NRS and PROMIS pain scores. It tests whether a single index operation can prophylactically prevent the pain syndromes that ordinarily require a second procedure to treat.
TMR was originally developed for prosthetic control, and its analgesic benefit was recognized only after patients undergoing delayed TMR reported dramatic neuroma pain relief. The question this paper addresses is whether moving TMR to the index amputation prevents pain from developing at all, rather than treating it after the fact.
When you are planning a major upper-extremity amputation, identify and tag the major mixed and sensory peripheral nerves during the dissection. Coapt them to redundant motor branches end-to-end using 9-0 nylon epineural sutures under loupe magnification. Motor nerves are left untreated — they do not form symptomatic neuromas.
The payoff: more than doubling the chance the patient wakes up from amputation without phantom limb pain, and eliminating severe PLP entirely in this cohort. That outcome ordinarily requires a second operation.
The authors caution that early TMR does not address non-neural stump pain sources. Bony prominences, heterotopic ossification, bursitis. So patients can still develop significant residual limb pain through mechanisms this technique cannot prevent.
This retrospective study asks whether performing targeted muscle reinnervation at the time of major upper-extremity amputation reduces phantom and residual limb pain. Sixteen early TMR patients were compared against 55 benchmark amputees without TMR using NRS and PROMIS pain scores. It tests whether a single index operation can prophylactically prevent the pain syndromes that ordinarily require a second procedure to treat.
TMR was originally developed for prosthetic control, and its analgesic benefit was recognized only after patients undergoing delayed TMR reported dramatic neuroma pain relief. The question this paper addresses is whether moving TMR to the index amputation prevents pain from developing at all, rather than treating it after the fact.
When you are planning a major upper-extremity amputation, identify and tag the major mixed and sensory peripheral nerves during the dissection. Coapt them to redundant motor branches end-to-end using 9-0 nylon epineural sutures under loupe magnification. Motor nerves are left untreated — they do not form symptomatic neuromas.
The payoff: more than doubling the chance the patient wakes up from amputation without phantom limb pain, and eliminating severe PLP entirely in this cohort. That outcome ordinarily requires a second operation.
The authors caution that early TMR does not address non-neural stump pain sources. Bony prominences, heterotopic ossification, bursitis. So patients can still develop significant residual limb pain through mechanisms this technique cannot prevent.