In the past 10-15 years marked progress has been made in the surgical treatment of congenital anomalies of the hand. More and more, the reluctance to operate on these deformities has been abandoned. One reason for this - at least in the German-speaking countries - was the thalidomide catastrophe (1959-1962), which involved the birth of many children with deformed upper limbs. These previously rare severe abnormalities resulted in many problems and required new ways of thinking in terms of their treatment by all persons concerned with their care. At the same time hand surgery was beginning to come of age and the combination of these two events increased the interest in the field of hand anomalies, particularly by orthopaedic surgeons who had always been involved in it. The idea and preparation for this book go back to 1964. Since that time nearly all operations on anomalous hands were systematically charted by us. They were photographically recorded from skin incision to wound closure. Regular follow-up examinations were performed. This atlas represents our experience gained in over a thousand operations. The book has been written by practitioners.
We hope that a hand surgeon looking for additional advice will find answers in regard to therapy and surgical suggestions. This intent influenced the book's compilation and structure: - Only those operations that have given us good long-term results will be discussed.