Where is the Lateral Cutaneous Nerve of the Forearm Anyway?
- University of Edinburgh, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Western General Hospital, Crewe Road, Edinburgh EH4 2XU. Email: cpw{at}skull.dcn.ed.ac.uk
Abstract
Even as a modestly busy general neurologist with a special interest in stroke, I must confess to no recall of ever having seen a patient with a problem affecting the lateral cutaneous nerve of the forearm. I had probably last thought seriously about the nerve in 1964 when I took my anatomy exams, and I presumably had seen it during the tentative dissection of an upper limb with my student colleagues in 1962. I suppose I must have thought about it again in the early 1980s, at least for long enough to have a picture put in my Handbook of Neurology (Warlow 1991). But this nerve is so insignificant for the medical neurologist that it is not even indexed in ‘Bradley’ under lateral, cutaneous, nerve or forearm (Bradley et al. 2000). Maybe Americans have done away with the nerve altogether as they advance to a higher form of primate life.
