BACKGROUND Wide-awake hand surgery is useful for tendon reconstruction because surgeons can observe the actual movement of the reconstructed tendons during the surgery. We hypothesized that accurate ultrasound-guided injection of local anesthetics into the sensory nerves contributes to reliable analgesia with a relatively small amount of anesthetic. METHODS We enrolled 8 patients who underwen...

Introduction. This study was designed to investigate the influence of the amount of suture material on the formation of peritendinous adhesions of intrasynovial flexor tendon repairs. Materials and Methods. In 14 rabbits, the flexor tendons of the third and the fourth digit of the right hind leg were cut and repaired using a 2- or 4-strand core suture technique. The repaired tendons were harves...

OBJECTIVE To demonstrate the role of sonography in depicting periarticular changes in juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and to find out whether certain tendons in juvenile SLE patients were different from those of healthy controls. METHODS Thirty juvenile SLE patients (27 female, 3 male) were recruited for this study. Sonographic evaluations were performed in the knee, ankle, elbow,...

Silicon rods initially advocated by Hunter have been widely used in two-stage flexor tendon reconstruction. Two-stage tendoplasty is an expensive procedure; with the addition of the high cost of rods, it is still more expensive. An experimental study investigated cheaper alternatives to silicon rods, but no clinical studies seem to have been reported so far. This study involved 17 patients unde...

Anatomical variations of the flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS) muscle and tendon unit are frequently reported by anatomists and clinicians. Anatomical muscle variations of the FDS and its tendons may include variations of muscle belly, presence of accessory or duplicate tendons, abnormal tendon connections, and absence of muscle or tendon components. Such variations may or may not have clini...

During the past 20 years, the difficult process of reestablishing satisfactory function after primary repair of flexor tendons has evolved from scientifically unsupported trial-and-error efforts to protocols based on sound laboratory and clinical investigations. Enhanced appreciation of tendon structure, nutrition, and biomechanical properties and investigation of factors involved in tendon hea...

Ultrasonography was used to measure flexor tendon sheath thickness in 14 insulin-dependent (IDDM) diabetics with diabetic cheiroarthropathy (DCA) and compared to 17 IDDM patients without DCA along with 10 healthy volunteers. Assessment was also made of the presence of systemic diabetic microvascular disease complications. A blinded visual 'eyeball' report on the ultrasound scans by a radiologis...