2023-06-20 06:01:00
A surgeon at the Saint-Jean clinic, Jacques Teissier from Montpellier has operated on quadriplegic patients for forty years to give them back the use of their hands. He performs tendon transfers when possible. Then he placed, until the beginning of 2000, an American neurostimulation implant. Today, he operates the pioneers who are testing the French implant developed by the start-up Neurinnov, in Montpellier.
Doctor Jacques Teissier, surgeon, is one of the linchpins of the European Habilis project, led by USSAP, the Roussillon health center which houses the reference center for neurological and traumatological disorders, Bouffard Vercelli.
Habilis wants to restore the use of their hands to quadriplegics, thanks to implants developed by the Montpellier company Neurinnov. For all patients, the adventure begins in an operating theater at the Saint-Jean clinic in Montpellier.
For Jacques Teissier, it started much earlier, during a congress organized in Edinburgh in 1978 which paved the way for functional hand surgery in quadriplegics. This is, in most cases, a transfer of tendons which can allow people with disabilities to regain some mobility, in certain circumstances.
An American implant
“These people have so-called low quadriplegia, with muscles that work below the elbow. This is the case for 80% of quadriplegics”, recalls Dr. Teissier, one of the pioneers, at the world level, of the intervention which will develop following the Gien Congress in 1982.
“We were a few insiders. I was a young head of clinic, I had participated in it with Professor Yves Allieu”, ex-head of the traumatology department of the Montpellier University Hospital, recalls Jacques Teissier.
The NeurInnov implant is primarily intended for patients with “high” quadriplegia, who have no muscle under the elbow, it is the same indication as the American “Free Hand”, which Jacques Teissier placed “at a dozen people”, while being aware of the imperfections: “It was a complex system, with invasive surgery, to connect eight cables to the electrodes. Over time, it happened that electrodes went up under the skin, the cables are exteriorized…”
The experience, which remains “fantastic”, made it possible to project oneself into the current evolution: “We had to simplify the system”.
“It’s simple, efficient and reliable”
Over the past five years, Dr. Teissier has already operated on eight patients with the NeurInnov implant. Only four, including Maxime Muzel, lived with the implant for a month to test the device in everyday gestures, the others did not keep the electrodes, placed during another surgical intervention, the time to make some adjustments.
“In the third phase, the implant will be definitive”, recalls Jacques Teissier, confident: “It’s simple, effective, energy efficient and reliable. It’s a surgery that does not last more than two hours, and which can make service to many patients”.
Will we one day be able to control the device by thought? He too has his own idea on the subject: “An electrode should be implanted in the ascending frontal zone. This would be the culmination of the system. We will come to this, in the coming decade, the technology is going very quickly”, hopes Jacques Teissier who explains that the Franco-Swiss technology from which Gert-Jan Oskam benefits is different from that imagined by scientists from Montpellier: “The Swiss have ‘bridged’ the spinal cord injury, here, the injury is repaired by connecting the brain to the spinal cord, under the injured party. In theory, the first option is ideal. But it must also be said that few patients are eligible for this very invasive technique”.
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