![]() I must be a heterozygote, however, because my daughter’s thumbs are normal. So I suppose it’s possible that both my case and my cousin’s are coincidental new mutations. Even though my affected cousin is related on my mom’s side, our mutual grandparents and uncles aren’t affected either. In my case, neither of my parents has BDD. But, there is at least one report of a family with incomplete penetrance in a female, where an unaffected woman had a father who was bilaterally affected and a daughter and granddaughter who were unilaterally affected (on opposite thumbs, no less). The earliest reports stated that inheritance is autosomal dominant and penetrance is complete in females and incomplete in males. There are other documented instances of unilateral cases and bilateral cases within the same family. ![]() Awesome.Ībout 3/4 of BDD cases are bilateral, but it can be unilateral – one of my cousins has a unilateral case, with one affected and one normal thumb (hi cuz!). Another one from the Journal of Heredity (1934) could be from Maleficient’s Top 10 List of Curses: “Four generations of short thumbs.” In Japan, this brachydactyly is not rare, and is called Mamushi-yubi (a viper) or Shamoji-yubi (a flat rice paddle used in Japanese cooking). The first clinical descriptions of BDD came out nearly a century ago, in 19. Oh yeah, and in case you were wondering why I was so interested… I have them too.īrachydactyly just means “short digits.” There are multiple types which can be classified based on which fingers and/or toes are affected, how severely they are affected, and whether it is part of a larger syndrome or not. Thanks to the internet trolls and some googling, I learned that the technical term for poor Megan’s heinous thumbs is Brachydactyly type D (BDD) : “short and broad terminal flanges of the thumbs.” Also – inexplicably – “murderer’s thumb.” Among the less-flattering descriptions are “clubbed thumb,” “toe thumb,” “potter’s thumb,” and if we want to get all mean-kid about it, strange, stubby and freakish. The coolest term to describe it is “digital clubbing,” which sounds like some sort of virtual-world online rave. Why? What could be so awful, so offensive, so downright ugly that the ad agency had to use a thumb-double (the first and only time I ever want to hear that phrase). Nobody even remembers what the commercial was for… (a Motorola phone, fwiw)Īnyway, there was a little social media fracas after it aired because various internet trolls noticed that a hand model had been used in the close-ups to hold the product.Īpparently the super-sexy starlet’s hands were deemed too unlovely for prime time. So why were the internet trolls so busy looking at her thumbs? "Now, a year on, I'm back in the shop and doing what I love again," Lee said in a video (opens in new tab) released by the hospital.Six words: Megan Fox in a bubble bath. Specialists at the hospital then led Lee through months of rehabilitative therapy to restore his hand function and grip strength to normal levels. During the surgery, Arrowsmith and her colleagues amputated one of Lee's big toes and affixed the digit to his hand. ![]() Lee underwent the procedure five days after his accident, and the operation took 10 hours to complete. "For it is the loss of the thumb-'the king of the digits'-that most debilitates the hand, and therefore best justifies the great skill and rehabilitative effort attendant to the procedure," the authors noted. In the end, the bizarre procedure is often worth the risk, according to the 2010 report. Removal of the big toe does leave an obvious deformity in the donor foot and can reduce the patient's power when pushing off from the floor, but generally, patients continue to walk normally after the procedure. For patients that lose their entire thumb, only a full toe transfer can provide them "optimal rather than adequate function." Either the big toe or second toe can be used for the transfer, although the bulbous big toe better matches a thumb's appearance and function.ĭavid Lee's healed hand post-surgery (Image credit: UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS OF DERBY AND BURTON) Toes serve as a near perfect substitute for fingers because both digits share a similar structure and range of motion, as well as sensitive skin and nails for pinching, according to a 2010 report in the Journal of Hand and Microsurgery. "As soon as it was put to me that attaching my toe gave me a chance to carry on my job, I instantly said let's do it," Lee said. Surgeons offer the procedure only to patients who have lost most of the thumb, "usually down to the knuckle," Arrowsmith added. "There are lots of different ways to reconstruct thumbs, but using the big toe gives the best functional and cosmetic benefits, as it is the thing most like a thumb on the body," Jill Arrowsmith, one of the hand surgeons who performed Lee's operation, said in the statement.
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