Scaphoid Shift Test

This pair of Pen and watercolour images, from 2012 depict two views of a surgeon performing a “Scaphoid Shift” test upon a patient’s left hand.

Known as the “Watson manoeuvre”, it is named after American hand surgeon, Kirk Watson who described it in 1988.The Scaphoid is a roughly crescent shaped bone, one of eight “carpals” in the hand. It sits on the thumb side, just beyond the wrist and is commonly broken, or fractured in a fall onto an outstretched hand. It is also connected to its neighbour, the Lunate, by a strong ligament which can also commonly be damaged by the same type of fall. Rupture of this “Scapho-lunate” ligament can lead to pain and instability of the wrist.

The illustrations show a surgeon performing the shift test by maintaining pressure on the Scaphoid with their thumb, whilst moving the hand at the wrist from the little finger side (first image) to the thumb side (second image). If the bone is unstable, a “clunk” is felt after releasing thumb pressure on the bone.

These images were both used by the British Society for Surgery of the Hand on the front cover of their spring scientific meeting programme in May 2012. Donald has provided cover illustrations for numerous BAPRAS and British Society for Surgery of the Hand publications.