The hand and wrist in rheumatoid and osteoarthritis

We present an overview of the common hand and wrist conditions associated with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, and introduce some common management solutions. The junior student of orthopaedics would do well to grasp the basics of this enormous subject in order to be able to apply these principles to other areas of the speciality. We describe an outline of the clinical assessment of the hand and wrist, some diagnostic criteria, a summary of the pathogenesis of arthritis, a description of the most commonly affected joints and soft tissues, and some indications on how to choose between the array of possible non-operative and operative managements.