Flexor tendon and peripheral nerve repair.

Any restoration of hand function following tendon and nerve injury has to include the repair or replacement of the hand's ability to perform a great many tasks. It is hard at first to appreciate fully the loss that occurs with flexor tendon injury. With loss of flexor tendons operating at the fingers or thumb, they cannot be fully closed and the hand is impaired for grasp and release as it interfaces with objects.

A research agenda for hand therapy.

A survey, to which 401 hand therapists responded, was conducted to establish research priorities in the field of hand therapy and to investigate barriers to hand therapy research. Results indicated that reimbursement issues, particularly those generated by managed care, were reported to have adversely affected quality of patient care, job satisfaction, job security, and ability to conduct research. Research priorities were defined in this study, and the need for clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of hand therapy interventions was found to be urgent.

The force/time relationship of clinically used sensory testing instruments.

The stimuli of commonly used sensibility measurement instruments tested in this study demonstrate unequivocally that "hand-held instruments" produce variations in application force from one stimulation to another, one instrument to another, and from one examiner to another. These application force variations cannot be compensated for by care in technique and need to be controlled for measurement reliability. Only the Semmes-Weinstein monofilaments provide some control of force during application and can be considered force controlled if calibrated and applied correctly.