Musculoskeletal Colloquialisms: How Did We Come Up with These Names?

Abstract

Eponyms and colloquial terms are labels that provide two kinds of information: the pattern of a complex injury or pathologic problem and, in the case of an eponym, the name of an individual who has been closely identified with the pathologic problem. Such terms remind us that the medicine of today is not entirely the work of our contemporaries. The article illustrates many of the common colloquial terms applied to fractures and musculoskeletal injuries seen in everyday practice. Wherever possible, the illustrations and definitions are based on the original descriptions of the injuries.

The parry problem

“…Fractures were frequently named to honor the physician who fully described them, for example, the fractures named for physicians Colles, Smith and Galeazzi. More picturesque fracture eponyms were derived from a specific etiological mechanism such as the boxer's fracture, bumper fracture, clay shoveller's fracture and baseball finger (Lee et al, 2004;Schultz, 1990). Although attempts have been made to eliminate eponym usage in current clinical practice (Kishore et al, 2000;Strous and Edelman, 2007) and systems such as the AO (Association for the Study of Osteosynthesis) fracture classification (Müller et al, 1990) have been produced, eponyms continue to remain popular in clinical literature and reference manuals.…”

“…Lovell (1997) and Jurmain (1999) argued that ulna shaft fractures are often indiscriminately classified as a parry or its more recent eponym a 'nightstick' fracture (Lee et al, 2004). They observed that most bioarcheological reports referred to this injury as an isolated ulna shaft injury resulting from a blow and did not consider the involvement of the ipsilateral radius, the location of the lesion, the fracture line and the associated complications.…”

Bursae around the knee joints

“…[3] Some cases of bursitis are associated with certain occupations and are named accordingly; for instance, prepatellar bursitis is also known as housemaid's knee and superficial infrapatellar bursitis is synonymous with clergyman's knee. [4]…”

Integration of Imaging Signs into RadLex

“…The "Signs in Imaging" series in Radiology [6] constitutes a collection of 118 articles, published from 1999 to 2008, such as "Hawkins sign" [7] and "enlargement of the hilar periportal space" [8]. We incorporated terms and definitions from 10 review articles [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and from online references such as CHORUS [19,20], the Interactive Atlas of Signs in Musculoskeletal Radiology [21], Medcyclopedia [22], Radiopaedia [23], and RadsWiki [24]. These resources were selected as they represent the core resources that itemize radiology signs.…”