Original Articles: FracturesPredicted effects of metacarpal shortening on interosseous muscle function1
Section snippets
Materials and methods
Power analysis was performed and indicated 8 hands would be required. Ten hands were initially selected, allowing for errors in technique. One hand showed ulnar neuropathy, leaving 9 fresh-frozen adult human cadaver specimens without notable musculoskeletal defect or deformity and intact from the midhumeral level. The hand was amputated at the level of the radiocarpal joint. The dorsal skin was incised from the wrist to the middle finger proximal interphalangeal joint and reflected to the
Results
Interosseous muscle fiber length increased and pennation angle decreased monotonically with increasing proximal translation of the ring finger metacarpal Figure 2, Figure 3. Both linear and second-order polynomial regression revealed that fiber length and pennation angle changed significantly with metacarpal translation (p < .01). There was no significant difference in the behavior of the proximal muscle fibers compared with the distal muscle fibers (Fig. 3) based on the lack of significant
Discussion
Skeletal muscle function is related quantitatively to skeletal muscle architecture.9 In general, muscles with long fibers appear to be adapted for excursion whereas muscles with short fibers function better for force generation. The palmar and dorsal interossei are architecturally similar and have short fiber lengths suggesting adaptation for force generation in the hand.6 Loss of intrinsic muscle function owing to low ulnar nerve palsy has been shown to lead to a loss of grip strength of
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