Standing or sitting
Lateral or anteriolateral to the patient.
May I touch your forearm? ( or point to the demonstrated area ).
Please bend your elbow (or demonstrate). Relax your fingers. Now turn your palm up
and down (or demonstrate, which usually is much easier). (If needed, hold in this
position while I try to move your forearm.)
With the patient relaxed and the elbow somewhat flexed, place the fingers distal to the medial
epicondyle of the humerus and at a diagonal toward the radius. The fingers must stay relaxed or you will
palpate the wrist and /or finger flexor muscle activity. Test this by flexing and extending the fingers
and sensing the muscle activity in the superficial flexors during flexion motions. Guide the patient to
pronate and supinate the radioulnar joint. Palpate the pronator teres during the pronation motion. If needed,
provide gradually increasing resistance by having the patient ìholdî while you wrap your hand around the
forearm and attempt to move it in the direction of radioulnar supination.
VH ñ pronator teres