Popis: |
A disorder of the carpal lunate has been diagnosed as Kienbock's disease in a skeleton of a middle-aged Ainu male that was excavated from Sakhalin Island, northeast Asia. The bone lesion is primarily and unilaterally associated with the right wrist, where the right carpal lunate is collapsed and the radiocarpal joint shows degenerative arthritis. Interestingly, the left arm is more robust than the right and the left elbow shows considerable osteoarthritis. The most plausible explanation for these pathologies is that after developing Kienbock's disease in the right wrist, excessive use of the left arm made his left arm robust and finally gave rise to osteoarthritis in the left elbow. In archaeology, where only a few osteochondroses have been reported up until now, the present example is the first diagnosis of Kienbock's disease in skeletal remains. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |