DEMONSTRATION OF THE PALMAR
EXTRINSIC WRIST LIGAMENTS WITH
HIGH RESOLUTION SONOGRAPHY

Lynne Johnson and Richard Zwar

 

INTRODUCTION
Chronic wrist pain may be the result of carpal instability caused by ligamentous injury, or the pain may be due to injury to the ligaments without instability. This often causes a difficult diagnostic problem.

The ligaments of the wrist have been classified by Taleisnik,1 into intrinsic – entirely within the carpus and extrinsic – having an attachment to the carpus and passing out of the carpus. Injury to these wrist ligaments can be observed in high resolution wrist images obtained by MRI, Theumann et al, Rominger et al, Smith et al.2,3,4 However we describe the technique of using high resolution sonography to accurately define the internal substance and attachments of the palmar extrinsic ligaments.