Functional Evaluation of the Recovery of Prehension in Persons With Tetraplegia by Implanted Neural Stimulation

Electrical stimulation of the muscles has been used for decades in rehabilitation units specializing in the treatment of spinal cord injuries. It has been shown to be effective in building muscle and preventing muscle atrophy following spinal cord injury (SCI) or stroke. It can also be used to reduce spasticity and above all to promote functionally useful motor control. It is then a Functional Electric Stimulation (FES). In the quadriplegic person marked by a severe motor deficiency of the upper limbs, FES is today the only technique allowing to restore a functional gripping movements in the case where the active muscular resources below the elbows are missing or too weak to allow tendon transfer surgery.

Like "Freehand", all the devices using FES directly stimulate the muscles (surface, intramuscular or epimysial electrodes) and therefore require a high number of internal components with a theoretical risk of infection and greater rejection. since each muscle must be activated via an electrode (up to 12 in the case of "FreeHand"). The investigators propose instead selective neural stimulation as it allows stimulating several muscles via a single electrode. Neural stimulation requires less energy for muscle activation. In our approach, three electrodes will be implanted above the elbow on the median, the ulnar and the radial nerves. This considerably reduces the number of implanted elements and therefore i) the risk of infection, ii) the risk of failure, iii) the surgical risk thanks to minimally invasive surgery. The procedure consisted of placing a multi-contact cuff electrode around the radial, ulnar or median nerves and observing the effects of electrical neural stimulation in terms of muscle selectivity, force produced and movement induced. In a previous study, the investigators already proved through acute intra operative testing (under Ethics Committee approval, #NCT03721861) that:

No failure of the electrodes or of the stimulator was noted. For all of the 8 subjects, it was possible to selectively stimulate muscle groups to obtain the opening of the thumb and fingers, or the flexion of the thumb, fingers and obtaining possibly functional grip like the forceps with opposition of the thumb or palmar grip.

A second feasibility study (Ethics committee registration #2016-A00711-50) with 17 quadriplegic patients assessed the subject's ability to use voluntary contractions of sus lesional muscles (EMG recordings in 8 subjects) or voluntary movements of shoulders (inertial recordings in 9 subjects) to control the movements of a robotic hand or the triggering of an electrical surface stimulation of the muscles of the forearm. All of the patients managed to master the proposed interface after a short familiarization period.

On the basis of the results of these two studies, the investigator wish to take an additional step in the development of a gripping assistance device for patients with spinal cord injury by proposing the implantation of three cuff electrodes with percutaneous connection on the arm of people with tetraplegia. The electrodes will be kept in place for a period of 1 month before being definitively explanted. An implanted cable will connect the electrodes to an external connector. A preliminary study based on the implantation of only 2 electrodes (on the median and the radial nerve) was conducted in 2020 in 2 patients.vNeither of the 2 participants showed general and local comorbidity. Acceptability was optimal. None of the stimulation configurations generated contradictory movements. The success rate in task execution by the electro-stimulated hand exceeded the target of 50% (54% and 51% for patient 1 and 2 respectively). The compliance rate of the control orders in both patients was > 90% using motion IMU-based detection and 100% using EMG-based detection in patient 1. These results support the relevance of neural stimulation of the tetraplegic upper limb with a more selective approach, using multi-contact epineural electrodes with 9 and 6 contact points for the median and radial nerve respectively.