Prevalence of congenital absence of Palmaris Longus tendon in healthy volunteers - A cross sectional study

Background: palmaris longus though thought to be having no active function when present is useful for tendon transfers and as free tendon graft. many studies have been done in the past on various ethnic groups to see the prevalence of its absence. there have been none as yet in pakistani population. this is a small scale study on this subject. methodology: it was an observational,prospective,cross sectional analysis to see congenital absence of palmaris longus tendon among healthy volunteers in twoorthopedic out patients departments in lahore. scheaffer's test was used to screen all the subjects for absence of the muscle. all those with pathologies and injuries affecting the forearm/hand were excluded. results: in all 610 volunteers were tested finding 12.95% unilateral absence and 34.17% bilateral absence was recorded in the study group. conclusion: the percentage of congenital absence of palmaris longus tendon in pakistani population falls well within the range found for the other ethnic groups in the region reported in the past literature.