Ghazi M. Rayan • Joseph Upton III

2014

I first became interested in syndromic hand anomalies in 1980 when I was a hand surgery fellow at the Raymond Curtis Hand Center in Baltimore. A patient was brought to the US from Afghanistan with a case of Klippel-Trenaunay-Webber syndrome. The patient had grotesque overgrowth of her hands and upper extremities with her fingertips reaching her knees while standing. My mentor Dr. Raymond Curtis consulted Dr. Victor McKusick, a geneticist from John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who graciously came to Memorial hospital to examine the patient and gave us a fascinating impromptu lecture on the syndrome.