Wide Awake Surgery as an Opportunity to Enhance Clinical Research

Wide Awake surgery under Local Anesthesia with No Tourniquet (WALANT) has revolutionized clinical hand surgery, improving clinical outcomes and reducing postoperative pain and morbidity. It can also be used to deepen scientific knowledge, because the unsedated patient, with sensation intact and without the adverse effects of tourniquet neurapraxia or paralysis, can follow commands and actively move the limb after tendon and nerve surgery. These movements can be correlated with fingertip force, tendon tension, nerve conduction and amplitude, and muscle sarcomere length measurements to develop new insights into the effectiveness of many different tendon and nerve procedures in the hand.

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