Tuesday, United States researchers said that a new type of surgery could offer amputees better control over their artificial arms, by allowing them to point a finger, grasp a baseball bat or even pinch somebody else.

The researcher’s discovery accounts for the latest progress in a surgical technique that uses nerves severed by amputation in order to control artificial limbs.

The above-mentioned technique entails reconnecting amputated nerve fibers to muscles and afterwards using electrical impulses from those nerves, a method which serves to operate an artificial arm.

The findings of dr. Todd Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Presently, the majority of prosthetic arms are powered by body motion, with movement in the upper shoulder being transferred through a cable so as to operate the hand, wrist or elbow.

Nevertheless, this method only enables people to use one joint at a time and besides, it also needs a great deal of training.

In a telephone interview, Kuiken said that restoring nerve function translated as a more natural way aimed at controlling the artificial arms, while it also allowed people to move more than one joint at once.

Moreover, he added that thirty patients worldwide had benefited from the procedure, yet he also informed that the devices that had been used in the study had been prototypes and that more work was necessary before they were to be made widely available to patients.