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Biphalangeal fifth toe: an increasingly common variant?
Author(s) -
GEORGE M.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of anatomy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.932
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1469-7580
pISSN - 0021-8782
DOI - 10.1046/j.1469-7580.2001.19820251.x
Subject(s) - phalanx , incidence (geometry) , foot (prosody) , anatomy , bipedalism , clubfoot , biology , medicine , philosophy , surgery , deformity , mathematics , linguistics , geometry
The presence of 2 phalanges in the 5th toe was first described by Leonardo da Vinci in 1492 (O’Malley & Saunders, 1952) and is recognised as a normal variant. It is probably a true anatomical variant resulting from incomplete segmentation rather than the result of phalangeal fusion (Venning, 1960; Le Minor, 1995) and has been noted to be present in fetuses from as early as 12 wk (Venning, 1960). This variant (and the much rarer 2 biphalangeal 2nd–4th toes) is an exclusively human phenomenon suggesting it is a response to bipedalism (Le Minor, 1995). Various investigators have reported the incidence of the 2 phalanged 5th toe of populations as between 35.5% and 80.4% with the lower values being seen in Europeans and the higher in Japanese (Venning, 1960; Thompson & Chang, 1995). Our study compared foot radiographs in the old and young to see if there was any difference in incidence.