Circumscribed palmoplantar hypokeratosis (CPH) is a rare acquired dermatosis first described in 2002. It affects mostly the thenar or hypothenar eminences of palm middle-aged elderly women and manifests clinically with sharply limited, annular erythematous plaques depressed surface, rimmed by slightly raised, keratotic border. Microscopically, circumscribed shows sharp decrease horny layer thic...

Congenital absence of flexor pollicis longus without associated anomalies is a rare cause of inability to flex the inter-phalangeal (IP) joint of the thumb. Other causes are: anomalous insertion of flexor pollicis longus (FPL), congenital tenovaginitis of the flexor tendon sheath, partial anterior interosseous nerve paralysis, traumatic rupture of FPL and anomalous bands connecting tendons.1 A ...

BACKGROUND Objective assessment of motor function is frequently used to evaluate outcome after surgical treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). However a range of outcome measures are used and there appears to be no consensus on which measure of motor function effectively captures change. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify the methods used to assess motor function in rando...

INTRODUCTION The tissue hemoglobin index (THI) is a hemoglobin signal strength metric provided on the InSpectra StO2 Tissue Oxygenation Monitor, Model 650. There is growing interest regarding the physiologic meaning of THI and whether a clinically useful correlation between THI and blood hemoglobin concentration exists. A series of in vitro and in vivo experiments was performed to evaluate whet...

An electrophysiological study has been made of the extensor digitorum brevis, thenar and hypothenar muscles in 25 patients with chronic and acute polymyositis. It was found a reduction of the number of functioning motor units in some patients with chronic polymyositis and only in one of those affected by acute polymyositis and only in one of those affected by acute polymyositis. The sizes of th...

Tissue hypoxia is a common end product of circulatory shock and a primary target for resuscitation efforts. In this issue Podbregar and Mozina show that thenar tissue O2 saturation (StO2) and mixed venous O2 saturation (SvO2) co-vary in patients in left ventricular failure, but in patients with sepsis StO2 was higher than SvO2. Although StO2 may co-vary with SvO2 they have different determinant...

The aim of this study is to establish whether the thumb is represented independently of the palm. An exogenous spatial cueing paradigm was used, where participants had to detect a tactile stimulus that could appear on the proximal and distal phalanges or metacarpus of the thumb (thenar area; Experiment 1) and the metacarpus of the thumb or hypothenar area of the palm (Experiment 2) of the left ...

A 76-year-old man presented with a 2-month history of swelling and tenderness of the left thumb and thenar. The patient had type 2 diabetes mellitus. He had been bitten by a dog on the left hand 1 year previously, and the wound had healed without treatment. He was initially diagnosed with non-infectious tenosynovitis and received steroid injections repeatedly (Fig. 1a). Thereafter, open diagnos...