Monday, February 25, 2013

Nerve I

This week, we're going to do some peripheral nerve palsies because I happen to be very weak (pun intended) on them.


A 30 year old man presents with wrist drop. On examination, he has weakness of his finger and wrist extensors. He also has loss of sensation over the dorsum of his hand. Triceps strength is normal. You give the patient some thiamine because of alcohol use, but that doesn't change anything.

Challenge: What's the lesion?

Image shown under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License, from Wikipedia.

3 comments:

sibogox said...

Radial nerve palsy. Triceps function is impact means the lesion are located down below on branch nerves

sid said...

Saturday Night Palsy.. Compression of the radial nerve as it emerges from the spiral groove on the posterior aspect of the (humerus) arm..

Craig said...

nice! you guys are awesome at anatomy
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Nerve I

This is a radial neuropathy. The radial nerve is particularly vulnerable to compression where it runs next to the humerus in the spiral groove, earning a nickname Saturday night palsy when inebriated individuals develop this disorder.

Source: UpToDate.