Hand/Wrist News

While they make good pets for some people, recently published data show that cat bites to the hand carry serious risk of infection.   “Cats’ teeth are sharp and they can penetrate very deeply, they can seed bacteria in the joint and tendon sheaths,” Brian T. Carlsen, MD, a plastic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, and colleagues wrote in the study. “It can be just a pinpoint bite mark that can cause a real problem, because the bacteria get into the tendon sheath or into the joint where they can grow with relative protection from the blood and immune system.” Researchers studied 193 patients who had with cat bites to the hand during a 3-year period. Overall, 57 patients (30%) required hospitalization, of which the mean length of stay was 3.2 days, and 38 patients required debridement and surgical irrigation. Eight patients required multiple procedures. Patients with bites over any joint in the hand or wrist were more likely to develop an infection than patients who had bites over the soft tissue. The mean time from instance of bite to medical care was 27 hours. Middle-aged women were found to be the most common victims of cat bites, the researchers concluded. “Cat bites look benign, but as we know and as the study shows, they are not. They can be very serious,” Carlsen stated.

WAILEA, Hawaii — Orthopedics Today Hawaii 2014 kicked off today with a traditional Hawaiian blessing and a full schedule of presentations on meniscectomy, articular cartilage surgery and updates on ACL revision reconstruction.

Researchers from Boston have found wide variation in the use of common upper extremity procedures such as rotator cuff repair, shoulder arthroscopy and carpal tunnel release.

A new MRI technique developed by a group at UC Davis in Sacramento allows patients to have video of their wrists in motion for diagnostic purposes. “Patients can reproduce the motion that is bothering them while they are inside the scanner and physicians can assess how the wrist is actually working. Some patients only have pain or other symptoms with movement,” Robert Boutin, MD said.

A new study showed that patients who suffered a Colles’ fracture are six times more likely than controls to suffer a subsequent hip fracture.   In the study, which was presented at a recent Osteoporosis Foundation meeting in Hong Kong, researchers T.-L. Huang and C.-W. Chen, of China Medical University, in Chinese Taipei, showed that hip fracture incidence was highest within 1 month after subjects sustained a Colles’ fracture and that hip fracture incidence increased with age.

SAN FRANCISCO — Arthroscopy did not aid in the reduction of intraarticular distal radius fractures when combined with fragment specific fixation, according to a recently presented study.

New Era Orthopaedics LLC announced that it has entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with French medical device manufacturer NeoSteo SAS in Nantes, France.

Nearly half of orthopedic surgeons have sustained at least one work-related injury during their careers, and in many cases, the available institutional resources are inadequate, according to results of a recently published study.

Pediatric patients who underwent carpal wedge osteotomy for amyoplasia congenita had sustained improvement at 5.7-year follow-up, according to researchers of this study.

More than half of patients who received collagenase clostridium histolyticum did not show recurrent symptoms of Dupuytren’s contracture, according to a study presented at the American Society for Surgery of the Hand Annual Meeting.