ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Carpal boss of the hand is a rare lesion. This study was conducted to recognize the clinical patterns of this disease entity and to evaluate the diagnosing modalities, differencial diagnosis, and results after operative treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We report upon 7 operative cases of carpal boss of the hand. There were 5 females and 2 males with an aver-age age of 35.4. The mean follow up period for patients in this study was 15 months. The dominant hand was affected in 4 cases and the small ganglion was associated with the carpal boss in 4 cases. RESULTS: The average duration of conservative treatment before surgical treatment was 8.3 months. All of the patients had taken NSAIDs prior to surgery and 4 patients had received a corticosteroid injection at least once. All of the patient had surgical treatment and complete symptomatic relief was achieved in 6 cases. One patient had no symptomatic relief. CONCLUSION: We operated upon patients who did not respond to conservative treatment or in whom the carpal boss associated with a ganglion, 5 of 7 cases showed a satisfactory result. In view of these results, we recommended that operative treatment should be con-sidered in such cases.