A STUDY OF PROPORTION OF HAND SEGMENTS IN A POPULATION OF CENTRAL INDIA

*Dr. H. S. Varma, Dr. Ashish Sirsikar and Dr. Nishant Gupta

ABSTRACT

It has been generally accepted in medical literature that there is certain regularity in the proportion of hand segments. The eminent hand surgeon J. William Littler[1] in 1973, proposed two mathematical relationships between the anatomic and functional geometry of the hand. Firstly, the motions of the tips of the fingers follow an equiangular spiral and second that the lengths of the phalanges follow a Fibonacci series. We studied the anterior-posterior X-Ray images of right and left hands of 200 adult patients from 19 to 60 years old without any bone pathology or deformities of the hand. For the index, middle and ring fingers the average PIP–DIP/ DIP–Tip ratio was 1.3. This approximates to a ratio for the distances PIP–DIP/DIP–Tip of 4:3. The PIP–DIP/ DIP–Tip distance for the little finger was also 1.3. The ratio of the distance from the metacarpophalangeal joint to the proximal interphalangeal joint (MCP-PIP) and the distance from PIP to phalangeal tip is 1:1 in all the fingers. The ratio of the distance from the PIP to the distal interphalangeal joint (PIP-DIP) and the distance from the DIP to the phalangeal tip (DIP-tip) is 1.3:1 for all the fingers. In other words, the ratios of the DIP-tip/PIP-DIP/MCP-PIP distances were 1:1.3:2.3 for all fingers.

Keywords: PIP - Proximal interphalangeal joint, DIP - Distal interphalangeal joint, MCP - Metacarpo phalangeal joint.