SPMLs & EtOH

This youngster had open adductor ‘release’ [cut, divided, lengthened… = release of tension]. Upright, he kept scissoring. Under anesthesia as seen here, legs were easily spread wide manually by the assistant. Slowing the neural conduit with focal ethanol fixed it.

Now recall what elastics did to our athlete volunteers and ponder if noise driven reflexes spread to random other locations can dampen the pendulums used in walking. Of course. Do slow movements then repeat again fast, very obvious. Maybe that’s all you need to deal with. OK. If there is obvious contracture we can also quickly adjust that as well. But we do not want big ranges as more is not better. Loss of control can result from range that the patient can’t reign in or does not capture and redirect pendulum kinetic energy.. end swing dampening. Often after SPMLs in the legs, reduction of reflex overflow tone shows in the arms. We will accept that! But, especially in kids with dystonic aspects to the upper body, we can deal with arm dysfunctional posturing with ethanol ‘blocks’ aka ‘alcohol blocks’. And again the blocks are not actually “blocks”, they are … uh… mmm.. no no I’ll – oh: selective focal perineural ethanol dysmyelination -the term nobody uses for obvious reasons. In fact, it becomes a naming Rubik’s cube.

selective focal perineural ethanol dysmyelination focal perineural ethanol selective dysmyelination ethanol selective perineural focal dysmyelination... and so on.