Introduction: Scaphoid dislocations are rare injuries, usually resulting from high-energy trauma and therefore associated to other lesions which may obscure the diagnosis.
Case presentation: The authors present a case of a 59-year-old man with a partial complex dislocation of the scaphoid, diagnosed 6 days after the initial injury. Closed reduction was unsuccessfully attempted, so the patient was submitted to open reduction and internal fixation. The functional and radiological results were good.
Conclusion: Physicians should be aware of this rare lesion, because a delayed diagnosis may rend the treatment more difficult and compromise the results. The threshold for an open treatment should be low because rotatory subluxations of the scaphoid may not be detectable in simple radiographs and be responsible for the appearance of degenerative changes in the long term.
Keywords: Scaphoid dislocation; carpal dislocation; wrist trauma.
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