Bone and Joint

Abstract

All bones consist of peripheral cortical (compact) bone and central medullary (trabecular or cancellous) bone. In long bones, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of cortical and cancellous bone at any given site: in the diaphysis, the cortical bone is thick whereas the trabecular bone is sparse; conversely, metaphyseal and epiphyseal regions are characterized by thin cortical bone and prominent cancellous bone. In addition to bone trabeculae, the medullary cavity contains bone marrow, including yellow marrow (housing fat and connective tissue) and red marrow (consisting of hematopoietic cells, fat and connective tissue). The distribution of hematopoietic and fatty marrow is dependent on age and metabolic state (Ricci et al. 1990). The outer surface of cortical bone is invested by the periosteum—a dense fibrous connective tissue layer that is anchored to the cortical bone by means of perforating Sharpey fibers-which plays a role in allowing rapid healing of fractures.KeywordsArticular CartilageSeptic ArthritisMedial Collateral LigamentHyaline CartilageJoint EffusionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.