Birth trauma and brachial plexus injury

Overview & Definition

Birth trauma is the physical injury a newborn sustains during the mechanical forces of labour and delivery. It spans the gamut from trivial soft-tissue bruising and clavicular fracture to the devastating neurological injuries that shape a child's lifetime function — and the most important of these, because of its frequency and its treatability, is brachial plexus birth injury (BPBI). A newborn who holds one arm adducted, internally rotated, and pronate at the side with the wrist flexed — the so-called waiter's-tip posture — has an upper-trunk (Erb-Duchenne) palsy until proven otherwise. ^{[1] [2]}

Brachial plexus birth injury is the traction injury of the C5–T1 nerve roots sustained when the head and neck are forced laterally away from the shoulder during delivery. It is not a single disease but a spectrum, graded by the Narakas system from a mild conduction-block neurapraxia (grade I, near-complete recovery) to a total-plexus injury with preganglionic root avulsion and Horner syndrome (grade IV, the poorest outcome). The decisive clinical task is not the diagnosis at birth — the posture makes it obvious — but the disciplined monthly tracking of recovery, because the absence of biceps recovery by three months is the threshold that separates the infants who will recover spontaneously from those who need microsurgical nerve reconstruction. ^{[2] [3]}

References10ShowHide

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10. [10]Malik S; Bhandekar HS; Korday CS Traumatic peripheral neuropraxias in neonates: a case series. J Clin Diagn Res, 2014.PMID 25478423