1. The success of any method of treating the injured hand is to be measured by the use that is made of the remnant. 2. Careful, prompt surgical treatment of the wound will usually allow prompt healing. 3. Skin-grafts, internal fixation of fractures and the eking out and rearrangement of tissues that have escaped injury have an important place in primary treatment. 4. Many hands so treated are ready for use after one operation and within a few weeks of being injured. 5. Reconstruction in several stages should not be carried out unless it offers a reasonable prospect of improvement that will be useful to the particular patient.
1. The bad reputation of fractures of the scaphoid bone is based on 2. The results obtained in five series comprising over 1,000 fractures suggest that 95 per cent of adequately studied fractures less than a month old unite if properly treated. 3. Sixty cases of established non-union have provided evidence that disability is almost always the result of further injury and that the disability is usually relieved by a short time in plaster. 4. There is no evidence to support the widely held beliefs that 5. A policy of treating the wrist and not merely its radiological appearances is advocated.
1. The methods of treating flayed limbs are enumerated, with mention of the reasons against conserving the injured skin. 2. The reasons for conserving the injured skin are presented and they are backed by the results in the patients described. 3. The factors that may influence the survival of injured skin are discussed, and the indications for, and methods of, conserving injured skin are described.
1. Synovectomy was carried out in thirty-four knees, of which thirty-one were certainly or probably afflicted by rheumatoid arthritis. 2. Synovectomy was considered only when adequate medical and physical treatment had failed to afford relief. Its purpose is to preserve useful function, and one of the principal factors influencing the decision to operate was the retention of a normal or good radiographic joint space in a persistently painful, warm and swollen knee. 3. Radiographic appearances constituted a useful but not infallible guide to the true state of the articular surfaces. 4. The method of operation, findings and subsequent care are described. 5. Up to two years after operation it appeared that improvement might be related to the state of the articular surfaces, but after two years this relationship was not evident and an attempt to explain this difference has been made. 6. It seems clear that the longer-term results are determined mainly by the course taken by the rheumatoid process. An unfavourable course was associated with considerably less satisfactory results than was a favourable course. 7. It is concluded that in rheumatoid arthritis which has resisted rest and medical treatment synovectomy of the knee is most likely to be successful when the radiographic joint space is good or normal, and when the rheumatoid process follows a favourable course. To undertake the operation at an early stage in the disease is to leave in doubt the outcome, as this is dependent upon the as yet undeclared general course of the disease. Even so, early synovectomy is worth considering when nothing else has given relief. The fact that arthrodesis has only once been necessary after synovectomy appears to justify the policy of salvage described.
