Metacarpal Fractures
Original Editor - --Marie Avau 17:24, 15 September 2015 (BST)Marie Avau , Debby Decock, Farrie Bakalli, Margaux Jacobs
Top Contributors - Tim Yun, Debby Decock, Chrysolite Jyothi Kommu, Admin, Lucinda hampton, Kim Jackson, Andrew Slegel, Marie Avau, Rachael Lowe, Scott A Burns, Johnathan Fahrner, Shreya Pavaskar, 127.0.0.1, WikiSysop, Anas Mohamed, Mila Andreew and Naomi O'Reilly
1. Search strategy
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To get a first global view on our topic, we inserted words like metacarpal fracture, anatomy of the hand, fractures of the metacarpals, … in Pedro and PubMed. Then, to complete every part of our subject, we continued with terms like: diagnosis of metacarpal fracture, treatment, epidemiology and characteristics and physical therapy after metacarpal fractures. With the articles and links we found with this keywords, we completed a big part of our task. After this, some of the items were still incomplete or empty, so we did a more thorough search for medical and physical therapy, examination, outcome measures and recent related research. We putted words like treatment of metacarpal fractures, outcome measures of hand fractures and physical therapy metacarpal fractures in the available databases (Pedro, PubMed, research gate, springer link, Medscape, …)
2. Definition/ Description
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A metacarpal fracture is a break in one of the five metacarpal bones of either hand. Metacarpal fractures are categorized as being fractures of the head, neck, shaft, and base (from distal at the metacarpal phalangeal joint to proximal at the wrist). [1,2 Blomberg et al, level 5,8]
Thereby we also have the Boxer fracture, this is another name for a fracture of the fourth or fifth metacarpal. This is one of the most common metacarpal fractures, in contrast with the fractures of the thumb (Bennett’s and Rolando’s fracture). [2] (Blomberg et al, level 5)
3. Clinically Relevant Anatomy
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The hand is composed of 19 bones (5 metacarpals and 14 phalanges), more than 30 tendinous insertions and numerous complex structures. The metacarpals are long, thin bones which are located between the carpal bones in the wrist and the phalanges in the digits.[4,17]
