Medical Article Analysis

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I have chosen an article titled, “Long-term follow-up of trapeziectomy with abductor pollicis longus tendon interposition arthroplasty for osteoarthritis of the thumb carpometacarpal joint.” This article comes from the Journal of Orthopaedics, Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages 59-64, June 2013. The authors of this article are Erez Avisar, Michael Elvey, Ziv Wasrbrout, and Maurice Aghasi. The hypothesis of this article was that the participating patients with moderate to severe osteoarthritis of the thumb would receive higher quality long-term results after receiving a trapeziectomy with abductor pollicis longus (APL) interposition arthroplasty. The primary reason for this investigation is to try and determine the optimal treatment for carpometacarpal (CMC) arthritis care as well as to analyze the patient’s post-surgical well-being after a prolonged period of time, fifteen years in this case.
The article first introduced that CMC is the most common joint in the hand to become arthritic and is characterized by pain, weakness, and deformity all of which can lead to significant disability (Aghasi, M., et. al, 2013). The pathophysiology of the arthritis is deemed to derive from either: 1) human evolutionary adaptation which has sacrificed the stability of the CMC joint or 2) the weakening of the palmar beak ligament and destabilization of the saddle joint leading to degenerative alterations. Once conservative methods of treatment, such as hand therapy, splinting, and steroidal injections have been exhausted surgical intervention is taken. This particular surgery involves an incision 1cm distal to the base of the first metacarpal and continuing proximally over the CMC joint, through the snuff-box, and ending 2.5 cm proximal to the radial styl...

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...ndependent variable in this study is the surgery and the dependent variable is the symptomatic and functional evaluations. Further testing needs to be completed on this topic to provide more definitive evidence that this particular surgery is the most effective in alleviating pain and increasing joint functionality in the long term. The one major drawback to this study was that it had an extremely small sample size, n=13. This makes it very difficult to say that the hypothesis is 100 percent acceptable. Further research is warranted on this topic.

Works Cited

Aghasi, Maurice., Avisar, Erez., Elvey, Michael. & Wasrbrout, Ziv. "Long-term follow-up of trapeziectomy with abductor pollicis longus tendon interposition arthroplasty for osteoarthritis of the thumb carpometacarpal joint.” Journal of Orthapaedics Vol. 10. Issue 2. (June, 2013): 59-64. Web. 4 June. 2013.

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