Evaluation of Elbow Flexion as a Predictor of Outcome in Obstetrical Brachial Plexus Palsy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to answer two questions. First, are there obstetrical brachial plexus palsy patients with no elbow flexion at 3 months who go on to recover useful upper extremity function without surgical intervention? Second, are there patients with evidence of elbow flexion at 3 months who do benefit from brachial plexus reconstruction? METHODS: The authors retrospectively reviewed a sample drawn from 253 consecutive patients at The Hospital for Sick Children obstetrical brachial plexus database from 1993 to 1996. Inclusion criteria were examination at age 3 months and either complete spontaneous recovery or repeated examination after age 3 years. Two hundred nine patients satisfied the inclusion criteria. Patients were distributed into four groups: group A, no elbow flexion at age 3 months (operative management); group B, elbow flexion present at 3 months (operative management); group C, no elbow flexion at age 3 months (nonoperative management); and group D, elbow flexion present at 3 months (nonoperative management). RESULTS: Groups A, B, and C showed significant intragroup improvements in both elbow flexion (p < 0.0001) and total limb motion scores (the sum of 15 individual joint motions) (p < 0.0001) with time. No differences were noted among groups A, B, and C for either elbow flexion or total limb motion scores at final follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Early elbow flexion alone is not a sufficient criterion to recommend a nonoperative approach. In addition, spontaneous recovery of useful upper extremity function has been observed in a carefully selected subset of patients without elbow flexion at 3 months.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".