How the US Army Forged Hand Surgery.

As the United States plunged into World War II, the surgeon general, Norman T. Kirk, scrambled to care for the complex hand injuries sustained in combat. To remedy this problem, Major General Kirk appointed Sterling Bunnell, a general surgeon and a World War I veteran with a keen interest in hand injuries, to serve as the consultant to the Secretary of War.

Plaster: our orthopaedic heritage: AAOS exhibit selection.

Background: Plaster has been used for centuries as a stiffening agent to treat fractures and other musculoskeletal conditions that require rest, immobilization, or correction of a deformity. Despite modern metallurgy and internal stabilization, plaster casts and splints remain an important means of external stabilization. Casting is a dying art as modern internal and external fixation replace external immobilization.

Anatomy of the anterior interosseous innervation of the pronator quadratus: evaluation of structures at risk in the single dorsal incision wrist denervation technique.

Purpose: Patients with chronic wrist pain often are treated with wrist denervation, which typically involves transecting both the anterior interosseous nerve (AIN) and the posterior interosseous nerve. A single dorsal incision approach is an improvement over the more traditional multiple-incision technique. The purpose of our study was to describe the branches of the AIN to the pronator quadratus and evaluate the risk of denervation with the single dorsal incision technique.