Immediate postsurgical prosthetics fitting in the management of upper-extremity amputees.

1 School of Medicine, University of Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, Fla. 33152. In the experience of the authors of this article, immediate postsurgical prosthetics fitting has been the most satisfactory means of managing lower-extremity amputees (1,2,3,4,5). The procedure has allowed better control of postsurgical edema, reduced postoperative pain, permitted more rapid conditioning of the stump, and shortened the time between amputation surgery and definitive prosthetic fitting. These conclusions are based on the experiences gained with 200 below-knee amputations followed by immediate postsurgical fittings at Jackson Memorial Hospital, the main teaching hospital of the University of Miami School of Medicine. The underlying cause of amputation in 85 per cent of these patients was peripheral vascular disease, usually with diabetes