Comparative Outcomes Between Surgical and Conservative Management of Mallet Thumb: A Systematic Review and Pooled Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: While mallet finger remains a relatively common injury of the hand, mallet thumb is much rarer in occurrence. Mallet thumb management has been noted infrequently within the literature and reliable evidence regarding the most effective method of management remains absent. The aim of this review is to assess the quality of literature that exists pertaining to mallet thumb to determine whether conservative or surgical management is superior. METHODS: A search was completed in February 2023 of Ovid Medline, Embase, CINAHL, and SPORTDiscus with no limitation on study type, and date of publication. Comparative outcomes of thumb interphalangeal (IP) joint range of motion, tip, lateral pinch and grip strength, complications, outcome measure scores, and follow-up period were recorded. We assessed 103 mallet thumbs (51 surgically and 52 conservatively managed) across the 23 studies of low to moderate quality based on the Structured Effectiveness Quality Evaluation Scale. The authors adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. RESULTS: While recommendations remain weak due to low quality of evidence, our review found a lower complication rate and higher IP joint flexion in thumbs managed conservatively. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate a need for future research to shift toward ensuring standardized patient-rated outcome measures are utilized and functional outcomes are included in research planning and operationalization in order to contextualize clinical outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.050 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.018 | 0.020 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.013 | 0.012 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".