Dupuytren Contracture; A Connective Tissue Disorder

Dupuytren Contracture which is also known as morbus Dupuytren is a flexion contracture of the hand which is due to a palmer fibromatosis. InDupyvtren contracture, the fingers bend towards the palm making it very difficult to fully straighten them. We need to have knowledge on Dupuytren Contracture to be aware of this ailment in order to have effective treatment for the same.

Very often we tend to suffer from some ailments and due to ignorance and negligence one may go through pain and suffering due to it. It is an inherited connective tissue disorder involving the palmar fascia of the hand and named after the surgeon, Baron Guillaume Dupuytren who in 1981 described an operation to correct the ailment in the Lancer. The little finger and the ring finger are the most affected area on the hand and while the ring finger may be affected in advanced cases, the index finger as well as the thumb is mostly spared.

This ailment progresses slowly and often does not cause any pain. The palmar fascia of these patients thickens and shortens so much so that the tendons connected to the fingers have difficulty in moving freely. Moreover the palmar fascia gets hyper plastic and contracts.

These incidences tend to increase after the age of 40 where men get more affected than women. Many individuals would prefer a Dream health without any ailments as they gradually advance in age and in order to maintain good health, one need to take proper care and attention to the changing phases of life as they progress in years.

Attention should be focused on the daily routine of life along with exercises and healthy intakes in the proper time schedule to maintain a fit and healthy way of living. When faced with any particular ailment, though we may not be able to evade it, one can take the proper treatment and precautions to treat and get back to the road to recovery and back to normal health.

In the case of Dupuytren’s contracture, the palmar fascia in the hand tends to get abnormally thick causing the fingers to curl resulting in impaired function of the fingers where the tiny and the ring finger gets affected. The palmar fascia’s main function is to increase grip of the hand over time while Dupuytren’s contracture decreases the patient’s ability to grip any object though pain is not associated with this ailment.

This disease starts with nodules in the palm of the patient’s hand and may even extend to a cord in the finger where the palmar fascia tends to get abnormally thick due to the change of collagen type. The palmar fascia normally consists of collagen type I, but in the case of Dupuytren patient the collagen type I changes to collagen type III which is comparatively thicker than collagen type I. This contracture creeps in slowly and treatment for this ailment is considered when the table top test seems positive.

During this test, the patient places the hand on a table and if the hand lies completely flat on the table, the test is said to be negative, but if the hand is not completely placed on the table leaving space between the table and a part of the hand, as big as the diameter of a ballpoint pen, the test is then considered to be positive with treatment and surgery recommended. Moreover, finger joints may also tend to become rigid and fixed and also has high recurrence.