Predicting Metacarpal Anatomic Lengths via Adjacent Metacarpals.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to generate validated prediction rules for metacarpal lengths that can be applied without the need for computation tools to assist with restoration of anatomic length after fracture and utilizes only ipsilateral metacarpals.

Methods: The anatomic lengths of all hand bones in 50 hands (25 men, 25 women) were used along with linear regression subset analysis to determine which metacarpals are the most predictive of each other. The most predictive metacarpals were then used to generate simple addition and subtraction prediction rules via simplifying the linear equation generated with linear regression analysis.