[Musicians consulting a hand surgeon having special competence in musician's medicine. A survey of 148 patients].

148 musicians (81 females, mean age 33.8 years) visited the senior hand surgeon's office due to disorder of an upper extremity. They had started playing at mean age of 8.6 years and did play mean 2.4 hours a day. One third were string players, and piano was the main instrument in 21%. The area of disorder was hand and wrist in 57%, forearm in 19%, and arm in 18%. Pain was the main complaint in 64%. Most of the musicians (87%) had consulted earlier another doctor and they already had a diagnosis, mostly some kind of tendonitis. However, in a half of them the diagnosis was changed. The most common diagnosis given by the hand surgeon was thoracic outlet syndrome, TOS. Those patients' earlier diagnosis was mostly tendinitis. Playing-related musculoskeletal disorders were counted in 14%, hypermobility syndrome in 8%, and focal dystonia in 5%. In 5 patients, hand surgeon was unable to make any relevant diagnosis. Only 16 patients (11%) needed surgical treatment.