Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health

Infectious flexor tenosynovitis (FTS) is a serious infection of the hand and wrist that can lead tonecrosis and amputation without prompt diagnosis and surgical debridement. Despite the growinguse of point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) by emergency physicians there is only one reported caseof the use of POCUS for the diagnosis of infectious FTS in the emergency department setting.We present a case of a 58 year-old man where POCUS identified tissue necrosis and fluid alongthe flexor tendon sheath of the hand. Subsequent surgical pathology confirmed the diagnosis ofinfectious FTS. [West J Emerg Med. 2015;16(2):260–262.]