Abstract

ANATOMICAL AND RADIOLOGICAL STUDY OF SUPRATROCHLEAR FORAMEN OF HUMERUS

Venkateshgobi Veerappan¹,Suba Ananthi², , Narayanan Gopal³ Kannan G⁴, Prabhu S⁴and *Karthikeyan⁵

¹Department of Anatomy, Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Pondicherry.
²Department of Anatomy,Sivaraj Homeopathic Medical College,Salem, Tamilnadu.
³Department of Anatomy, Sivaraj Institute of Medical Sciences,Salem, Tamilnadu.
⁴Department of Surgery, Sivaraj Homeopathic Medical College,Salem, Tamilnadu.
⁵Department of Microbiology, Sivaraj Institute of Medical Sciences,Salem, Tamilnadu.

ABSTRACT

A thin bony plate between coronoid fossa and olecranon fossa of humerus is sometimes perforated to form a foramen named as supra trochlear foramen (STF).It was present between two epicondyles also called intercondylar foramen .The Study was conducted in 74 dried humerus specimens from the Department of Anatomy, Sivaraj institute of medical sciences. Among those 39 are of left side; 35 are of right side. Supratrochlear foramen was seen in 14 (19.17%) bones, 9 were left side and 5 were right side. Mean transverse diameter of STF was 7.94mm and vertical diameter was 6.01.The presence of STF is associated with narrow intramedullary canal. In this study it was observed that the mean diameter of the intramedullary canal was less (4.48 mm) for the specimens with such foramen, but in the normal humeri it was 6.36 mm. Knowledge of this variation of Supratrochlear foramen in the distal end of humerus is essential in diagnostic orthopaedics, in intramedullary nailing of humerus and STF is a radiolucent area in radiographs and this may be misinterpreted for osteolytic or cystic lesion.

Keywords: Coronoid fossa, olecranon fossa, specimens.