Kienböck's disease
Kienbock disease is a rare bone disorder of unknown etiology characterized clinically by osteonecrosis of the carpal lunate, eventually leading to collapse of the lunate bone impacting wrist function
Kienböck's disease is a disorder of the wrist. It is named for Dr. Robert Kienböck, a radiologist in Vienna, Austria who described osteomalacia of the lunate in 1910.
It is breakdown of the lunate bone, a carpal bone in the wrist that articulates with the radius in the forearm. Specifically, Kienböck's disease is another name for avascular necrosis (death and fracture of bone tissue due to interruption of blood supply) with fragmentation and collapse of the lunate. This has classically been attributed to arterial disruption, but may also occur after events that produce venous congestion with elevated interosseous pressure.
Cause
The cause of Kienböck's disease is unclear. Possible causes include trauma, particularly to the wrist; variations in the blood supply of the lunate bone; and differences in the length of the ulna (one of the bones in the forearm), known as ulnar variance. Negative ulnar variance means that the ulna is shorter than the radius, and is associated with an increased risk of Kienböck's disease. The bone loses its blood supply, leading to avascular necrosis.
“Kienböck's disease” enters the record as kienbock disease is a rare bone disorder of unknown etiology characterized clinically by osteonecrosis of the carpal lunate, eventually leading to collapse of the lunate bone impacting wrist function. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kienböck's, disease and Kienbock can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1877388. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1910.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kienböck's disease” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.