What happens during De Quervain’s release surgery?
On the channel as “De Quervain's Surgery”
In this video Dr. Knight narrates a first dorsal compartment release for De Quervain’s. He points out the two thumb tendons and the second subcompartment that is easy to miss.
This is a transcript of a recorded talk from 2016. Any figures mentioned are from the recording and are not statements about current results or the practice.
Read the transcript 158 words
The transcript below is what Dr. Knight says in the video. We corrected the anatomy, drug and device names the automatic captions got wrong and added the punctuation and paragraph breaks. No words were changed, added or taken out. The uncorrected machine transcript is kept on file.
Transcript
De Quervain's surgery. This patient's undergoing a first dorsal compartment release. I'm going to make a transverse incision right over the first dorsal compartment. I'm exposing the abductor pollicis longus and extensor pollicis brevis tendons distal to the sheath.
Now I'm just running my scissors along the sheath to open the first dorsal compartment. It's a very tight compartment. You can see some inflamed extensor tenosynovium coming from the tendon sheath. You can see a rush of yellowish inflammatory fluid. Can see the APL tendons, which there's several slips of.
Upon moving the MCP joint though, there does not appear to be an EPB tendon, or extensor pollicis brevis tendon, within the sheath. So now I'm looking for a second subcompartment.
I'm opening the additional compartment. Now you can see the EPB tendon, rather robust tendon, extending the knuckle or the MCP joint of the thumb, now signifying a satisfactory release. Final inspection showing the adequately released subcompartments.
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