By Caribbean Medical News Staff
Picture the age of the corsets and images come to mind of women fainting in the movie Amadeus. The adage that there is nothing new under the sun also applies to fashion. Having made a comeback, but probably a bit more outrageous, the skinny jean is now a possible health hazard.
As we speak, an Australian woman who spent the day squatting and packing while preparing to move, has ended up in hospital where her pants had to be cut off her legs as her skinny jeans enveloped her thighs and calves.
“There’s only one other instance of skinny jeans appearing in the medical literature as a health hazard. In the 1980s, a pair of snug denims was tied to “lateral cutaneous nerve damage in the thigh” after compressing the nerve at the inguinal ligament, “ said Karmen Wai, MD and colleagues in their study.
The 35-year-old patient ended up with severe swelling of the legs and after feeling numb in her feet, she actually was then unable to lift her feet off the ground at all. She is now a patient at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia where physicians had to cut off her too tight jeans.
The case study in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry pointed to the culprit – skinny jeans and not squatting according to reports in the press. The woman experienced the textbook symptoms of neuropathy of the peroneal and tibial nerves.
Reports suggest that squatting had been associated with peroneal nerve damage, but not with tibial neuropathy. “The tibial nerve damage was likely due to compartment syndrome caused by the skinny jeans, which exacerbated the compression of the nerves near the calf muscles that were already swollen from squatting”, a media report stated.
“The patient in the current report had weakness in her ankle and toes, but her feet were warm and well perfused, and she had normal muscle power at her hips and knees.”
The patient is in a loose fitting gown on IV fluids. Who knows if she will wear the jeans again?
Ladies, take note with the high heels and foot, knee and back issues. Gentlemen, what about the skinny jeans too?
