Arthritis:Chronic pain, swelling, and stiffness in your joints often means that you have arthritis. This disease can be particularly troublesome when it affects your hand, fingers, or wrist, as it can limit your ability to do the things you do on a daily basis.
Baseball (Mallet) Finger: This injury to the outermost joint of the finger is very common among baseball and basketball players. Pain, swelling, and trouble extending the finger are all symptoms of this injury to the tendon.
Boutonniere Deformity: An injury to the tendons that straighten the middle joint of your finger can make you finger bend—and make it impossible to straighten. This is usually the result of a blow to the hand or an accident.
Boxer's Knuckle: A direct blow to the knuckle—usually at the base of the middle finger—can cause a tear in the tendon that straightens the finger. The knuckle becomes weak and painful. The injury gets its name from its frequency among boxers and martial arts fighters.
Brachial Plexus Injury (Erb's Palsey): The nerves that send signals from your spine to your shoulder, arm, and hand are known as the brachial plexus. When these nerves are compressed or stretched to the breaking point, you may feel a burning sensation in your arm—or a sharp pain, like a lightning bolt, at the moment of impact. This may be followed by numbness or weakness in the injured arm.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: If you feel numbness or tingling in your hand and arm, you may have the pinched nerve in your wrist that doctors call carpal tunnel syndrome. Repetitive motion causes this injury—which is was assembly line workers, people who work at a computer all day, and people in many other professions develop this disorder. Early treatment with pain killers, a wrist splint, and cortisone injections can help you avoid surgery.
DeQuervain Syndrome (Washerwoman's Sprain, Gamer's Thumb): It's not clinically proven that too much gaming or thumb-typing causes this painful condition, but DeQuervain Syndrome still gets one of its nicknames from video game enthusiasts. The pain begins in the thumb and travels down through the wrist. You may have trouble gripping things with the affected hand, and your wrist may be swollen on the thumb side.
Dupuytren's Contracture: Over the course of several years, this hand deformity pulls the pinky and ring finger toward the palm in a permanently curled position. You may feel a tough lump in the palm of your hand, and cords of tissue extending up the afflicted fingers.
Flexor Tendon Injuries (Jersey Finger): When a deep cut on the palm side of your hand damages the tendons that control your hand's movement, you have a flexor tendon injury. This condition makes it impossible to bend your fingers toward your palm.
Fractures: All broken bones are known as fractures. At UR Medicine Hand and Wrist Services, we can diagnose and treat any kind of fracture in the wrist or hand, and we are ready to work with you on recovery and rehabilitation.
Ganglion Cyst: These round or oval lumps may form on the tendons or joints of your wrist. They are non-cancerous and filled with a jelly-like fluid, and they may be painful if they press on a nerve. These often go away without treatment. Talk to your doctor about the treatment options and what will be best for you.
Kienböcks Disease (Avascular Necrosis of the Lunate or Lunatomalacia): An interruption of blood flow to a small bone in the wrist called the lunate can cause this bone to die. The symptom to watch for is pain and stiffness in the wrist. The cause of this disease is not known, but
Ligament Injuries: A sprain is an injury to a ligament, one of the strong bands of tissue that connect one bone to the next. It's very common to sprain a wrist, an injury that may stretch or partially tear a ligament. In a severe sprain, the ligament is torn clean through—and it may take a small bone chip (an avulsion) with it.
Nailbed Injuries: If you hit or jam your finger in an accident, the nail may separate from the nailbed. It can take six months for a new nail to grow back in its place. A doctor can help you detach the remaining nail and protect the nailbed from infection
Radial Tunnel Syndrome: The radial nerve runs from the side of the neck to the hand, passing through a tunnel in the elbow. When the nerve gets squeezed at the elbow joint, it can be very painful. This squeezing can come from repetitive pushing and pulling, bending the wrist, pinching, and gripping—all motions that are common in everyday life.
Raynaud's Phenomenon: If your fingers turn pale, then blue, then red when they are exposed to cold temperatures, you may have this unusual condition. While the cause of Raynaud's Phenomenon is not known, some treatments (including medications and protection of the hands) have been found to protect the fingers and toes from this spasm of the blood vessels.
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome: Also known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, this rare condition involves the sympathetic nervous system affects involuntary functions throughout the body. Patients have chronic, severe pain in an arm, fingers, palm, shoulder, or a leg or knee. The painful area may be swollen or inflamed, sensitive to hot and cold, and warm to the touch. The cause of this syndrome is not known, though it may come from a nerve injury, trauma, cardiovascular disease, or radiation therapy.
Repetitive Motion (Stress) Injury: People who perform the same motion over and over can injure muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves in the hand, wrist, foot, or ankle. This kind of injury can happen with athletes who play tennis, baseball or golf, but it's also common in long-distance runners.
Rheumatoid Arthritis: This form of arthritis is an autoimmune disorder—your immune system mistakenly attacks your body instead of fighting off infection. Rheumatoid arthritis affects the lining of the joints, causing pain and swelling and, eventually, bone erosion and deformity. It begins in the joints of your hands and feet, and it sometimes affects other organs like your eyes, skin, and lungs. Treatment can help slow the joint damage and help you manage the pain.
Skier's Thumb: This injury accounts for as many as 10 percent of all skiing accidents, because skiers fall on an outstretched hand holding a ski pole. The result is a painful tear of the ligament that connects the bones of the thumb. Ice and immobilization can help, but a full rupture requires a surgical repair.
Tendinitis: Any one of a wide range of activities can affect your tendons, either through repetitive motion or a sudden injury. Anyone can be affected, but tendinitis is more common in people over 40 because tendons become less elastic and tolerant of stress as we get older. Localized pain and restricted motion are the most common symptoms.
Trigger Finger: If one of your fingers or your thumb gets stuck in a bent position and you feel a popping or clicking when you try to straighten it, you may have trigger finger. This most often develops in the hand you use most. Your finger may be stiffer in the morning, and you may get a bump at the base of the finger.
