Intramuscular nerve distribution patterns of anterior forearm muscles in children: a guide for botulinum toxin injection.

Botulinum toxin (BoNT) can relieve muscle spasticity by blocking axon terminals acetylcholine release at the motor endplate (MEP) and is the safest and most effective agent for the treatment of muscle spasticity in children with cerebral palsy. In order to achieve maximum effect with minimum effective dose of BoNT, one needs to choose an injection site as near to the MEP zone as possible. This requires a detailed understanding about the nerve terminal distributions within the muscles targeted for BoNT injection. This study focuses on BoNT treatment in children with muscle spasms caused by cerebral palsy. Considering the differences between children and adults in anatomy, we used child cadavers and measured both the nerve entry points and nerve terminal sense zones in three deep muscles of the anterior forearm: flexor digitorum profundus (FDP), flexor pollicis longus (FPL), and pronator quadratus (PQ). We measured the nerve entry points by using the forearm midline as a reference and demonstrated intramuscular nerve terminal dense zones by using a modified Sihler's nerve staining technique. The locations of the nerve entry points and that of the nerve terminal dense zones in the muscles were compared. We found that all nerve entry points are away from the corresponding intramuscular nerve terminal dense zones. Simply selecting nerve entry points as the sites for BoNT injection may not be an optimal choice for best effects in blocking muscle spasm. We propose that the location of the nerve terminal dense zones in each individual muscle should be used as the optimal target sites for BoNT injection when treating muscle spasms in children with cerebral palsy.