Digital clubbing: An easily overlooked sign associated with systemic disease

摘要

Digital clubbing is a clinical sign that is often overlooked in its earlier stages but that can serve as an indicator of serious underlying systemic disorders, including pulmonary diseases (particularly lung cancer), cardiovascular abnormalities, diseases of the liver and gastrointestinal tract, and more. This article describes the approaches to identifying and characterizing digital clubbing in the clinical setting (either alone or as a feature of hypertrophic osteoarthropathy), elucidating its pathogenesis, and recognizing its associations with systemic diseases and the significance of those associations. Digital clubbing is a clinical sign that is often overlooked in its earlier stages but that can serve as an indicator of serious underlying systemic disorders, including pulmonary diseases (particularly lung cancer), cardiovascular abnormalities, diseases of the liver and gastrointestinal tract, and more. This article describes the approaches to identifying and characterizing digital clubbing in the clinical setting (either alone or as a feature of hypertrophic osteoarthropathy), elucidating its pathogenesis, and recognizing its associations with systemic diseases and the significance of those associations.