The rheumatoid wrist in black South African patients.

The wrist and hand X-rays of 75 black patients with rheumatoid arthritis were scored according to the Larsen criteria. The mean Larsen score for left hands was 9.6 (range 0-100) and for the right hands was 10:3 (range 0-100), whereas the score for the wrists were 2.5 (range 0-5) for the left and 2.7 (range 0-5) for the right. Our conclusion is that rheumatoid wrist involvement in black patients was more or less the same as reported in other series, but finger joint involvement was considerably less. This finding must influence surgical decision-making and also the interpretation of results of drug trials, whenever black patients are involved.