Chronic diffuse oedema of the rheumatoid hand: a sign of local lymphatic involvement.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis sometimes develop chronic oedema of the hand, in no way related to the involvement of finger and wrist joints, and affecting the whole hand diffusely. This swelling, in our experience, is relatively resistant to therapy, though some result may be obtained by diuretics and corticoids. Since we have not found any reports of studies of the aetiological mechanism of this symptom, we have developed a scintigraphic technique to study the lymphatic drainage in such cases.