Eur J Anat, 24 (6): 523-526 (2020)

16 Sesamoid bones in the hands of healthy patient: case report

Victor H. Villacis Basante¹, Jorge A. Cortez Vila², Kassandra Z. Bekris Torres², Ricardo C. Pacheco López¹, Rubén Hernández Ordoñez¹, Diego Pineda Martínez²

¹Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery service of the Hospital â??Dr. Rubén Leñeroâ?�, Mexico City²Department of Innovation in Human Biological Material, Faculty of Medicine, National Autonomous University of Mexi-co

ABSTRACT The sesamoid bones are round or oval bones that are located within tendons, and most theories consider that sesamoid bones in humans develop in response to local mechanical stress on a joint. Although their function is not well understood, it is known that they act as a pulley modifying the an-gle of movement and their insertion. They are mostly inconsistent, which is why they tend to be supernumerary and are located in different parts of the body at the level of the extremities, with the patella being the largest, most constant and best known. The prevalence and distribution of sesa-moids in the hand varies between different popula-tions and sex. They are rarely reported since they are only considered anatomical variants, but clini-cally there are several pathologies related to the sesamoid bones in the hand such as: trauma, de-generative disorders, giant cell tumors, osteochon-droma, avascular necrosis, tendon ruptures, ge-netic disorders and attention should be paid in pa-tients with acromegaly where their length is in-creased. In this article, we report a total of 16 ses-amoid bones, symmetrically distributed 8 in each hand of a healthy individual treated in the PlasticSurgery Department of the â??Dr. Rubén Leñeroâ?� Hospital in Mexico City. In the literature reviewed, we did not find a report with the presence of so many sesamoid bones in both hands, which moti-vated us to report it.

Keywords: Gross anatomy â?? Sesamoids â?? Supernumerary bones â?? Anatomy of the hand â?? Anatomical variants