Dupuytren's disease--a study of the pattern of distribution and stage of contracture in the hand.

The distribution and stages of contracture in the digits are examined in 901 persons with Dupuytren's disease and collected into an epidemiological study of 15,950 persons in a small Norwegian town. The frequency of contracted digits counted from the total number of affected hands, are for men (women in parentheses): Thumb 3.0% (0.6), Index finger 1.2% (1.7), Middle finger 28.3% (27.9), Ring finger 85.1% (92.3) and Little finger 45.4% (39.5). The most common combination of affected fingers are ring and little fingers. At corresponding ages, the contracture is more severe in men than in women, and more severe in the right than in the left hand. With the exception of the index finger, the degree of contracture increases from the thumb to the little finger, 29% of the men and 12% of the women examined had contracture of such an extent that surgical treatment was advisable. Only 5.7% of the men and 3.1% of the women had been operated on because of the disease, which indicates that operation statistics are based upon very selected patients. Many aspects of this disease can only be properly studied in epidemiological material.