More than 300 years ago Dr. Stephen Hales drilled holes in the shaft of chicken bones and noted that as the animal grew, the distance between these holes remained constant. This led him to conclude that longitudinal bone growth occurs at the end of the long bones, rather than in the middle. During the subsequent centuries, employing increasingly sophisticated approaches, we have learned that bo...

Tuberculosis (TB) is a global public health problem endemic to Morocco. While extrapulmonary TB uncommonly presents in osteoarticular anatomic locations, tarsal or metatarsal osteitis can occur when TB presents in the tarsal bones. Clinical symptoms are often insidious causing a delay in diagnosis that may lead to bone destruction. While diagnosis can be guided by X-ray imaging, bacteriologic a...

The midtarsal break was once treated as a dichotomous, non-overlapping trait present in the foot of non-human primates and absent in humans. Recent work indicates that there is considerable variation in human midfoot dorsiflexion, with some overlap with the ape foot. These findings have called into question the uniqueness of the human lateral midfoot, and the use of osteological features in fos...

Analysis of the clinical cases (Figs. 1 to 27) suggested that the injuries could be classified into five types (Table I). This classification was confirmed by experiment (Figs. 28 to 40). A review of sixty radiographs previously published showed that all but three could be classified within this scheme. Cases 1 5 and 17 in the present series are not typical, but a reasonable approximation could...

Several pathologies of the foot can be solved simply by adding an orthosis under the patient’s foot. Defining the geometry and the size of such orthosis is key in optimizing its influence on the foot. For example, an orthosis with a heel lift (HL) has an increased height below the heel to force the patient to put his weight on front of the foot. An orthosis with a metatarsal bar associated with...

Metatarsal fractures are one of the most common injuries of the foot. There has been conflicting literature on management of fifth metatarsal fractures due to inconsistency with respect to classification of these fractures. This article provides a thorough review of fifth metatarsal fractures with examination of relevant literature to describe the management of fifth metatarsal fractures especi...

Objectives: Osteoid osteoma (OO) is a small, benign, osteogenic bone tumor, with less than 11% of cases located in the feet. We review our experience in OO of the foot bones in order to characterize its prevalence, treatment, and recurrence rate at long term follow up. Methods: The medical records of 100 cases of osteoid osteoma of the foot treated between 1975 and 2009 were reviewed retrospect...

BACKGROUND It is currently unknown whether bone erosion in gout occurs through an 'inside-out' mechanism due to direct intra-osseous crystal deposition or through an 'outside-in' mechanism from the surface of bone. The aim of this study was to examine the mechanism ('outside-in' vs. 'inside-out') of monosodium urate (MSU) crystal deposition in bone erosion in gout. Specifically, we used three-d...

Diplopodia, or duplicated foot, is a rare congenital anomaly. It differs from polydactyly in that supernumerary metatarsal and tarsal bones are present as well as extra digits [1]. Only a few cases of this anomaly have been reported in the literature. Karchinov [1] reported six cases with associated hypoplasia or aplasia of the tibia. Hamanishi and colleagues [2] reported a case of diplopodia w...