Pterygium
winglike triangular membrane occurring in the neck, knees, elbows, ankles or digits
A pterygium (pl.: pterygia or pterygiums) is any wing-like triangular membrane occurring in the neck, eyes, knees, elbows, ankles or digits.
The term comes from the Greek word pterygion meaning "wing".
Types
Popliteal pterygium syndrome, a congenital condition affecting the face, limbs, or genitalia but named after the wing-like structural anomaly behind the knee.
Pterygium (eye) or surfer's eye, a growth on the cornea of the eye.
Pterygium colli or webbed neck, a congenital skin fold of the neck down to the shoulders.
Pterygium inversum unguis or ventral pterygium, adherence of the distal portion of the nailbed to the ventral surface of the nail plate.
Pterygium unguis or dorsal pterygium, scarring between the proximal nail fold and matrix.
Pterygium of the eye
A pterygium reduces vision in several ways:
Distortion of the corneal optics. This begins usually when the pterygium is greater than 2mm from the corneal limbus.
Disruption of the tear.
“Pterygium” enters the record as winglike triangular membrane occurring in the neck, knees, elbows, ankles or digits. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pterygium, winglike and triangular can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17142318. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pterygium” 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.