Is "wheelchair wrist drop" a new syndrome to watch for?

All in all, the present-day wheelchair is a poor place for nursing home patients to spend any length of time. Unfortunately, though, if you walk through a nursing home, you will find that a large number of patients spend many hours sitting in wheelchairs. We feel that the increased use of a wheelchair for daytime and evening sitting was a prominent causative factor of the radial nerve paralysis in the cases reported here, and we suspect that this syndrome is being overlooked. Since early diagnosis and prompt therapy may favorably improve the outcome, and awareness of the problem may prevent it altogether, we urge physicians to be wary of this apparently new syndrome and take precautionary measures where applicable.