[Comparative roentgenometry of the hand in aging]

Increasing age is a risk factor for the development of osteoarthrosis of the joints of the hand in adults between 21 and 60 years of age. Only in the very old (> or = 80 years) is osteoarthrosis of the hand part of the age related degeneration. The literature contains different parameters and indices correlating the amounts of minerals and ashes of metacarpal bones. Our results speak in favour of the presumptions published by Exton-Smith et al. (1969 b) that bone mass belongs among the biological characteristics of old age. Our investigations of hand roentgenograms reveal that remodeling of the joint socket as described by pathologists is not a general but an elective phenomenon. With age the wrist shows only an increasing angle of the radial joint surface (males, right hand) and there is a variation of form in the medial sesamoid bone at the first metacarpus (males, left hand).