Synovial Chondromatosis in a Child's Thumb: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Abstract

Primary synovial chondromatosis consists of cartilaginous metaplasia of the synovium, which leads to the production of intra-articular and periarticular osteocartilaginous bodies [8, 12, 18, 19]. The nomenclature has evolved with time to include chondromatosis of the joint capsule, diffuse enchondroma of the joint capsule, joint chondroma, synovial osteochondromatosis, and synovial chondromatosis [8, 9, 16, 18, 20]. Primary synovial chondromatosis most commonly occurs in young and middle-aged adults and is rarely found in children (youngest patient reported was 14 years old) [12, 19]. The entity usually involves the synovium of large joints (knee, hip, elbow, and shoulder) [3, 8, 15, 16, 18, 19, 26] but has been reported in the hand [2, 10–12, 20, 26]. To our knowledge, only two cases have been reported in the interphalangeal joint of the thumb [13, 14]. We report on a 13-year-old female with primary synovial chondromatosis of the inter-phalangeal (IP) joint of her thumb.