Hand or Finger Pain

Dr. Todd Gaddie:

Dr. Todd Gaddie here to talk to you about common sources of hand pain.

In the hand world, when we think about hand pain, we think about pain associated with an injury and pain that’s just kind of associated with regular daily use and no real injury.

The non-injury hand pain is much more common.

When we think about hand pain, we think about pain on the palmar side of the hand.

Trigger Finger

Usually we think of a trigger finger. Usually pain is down at the bottom of the hand here. It can be associated with a click, a catch, or actually a finger that locks. This is usually worse in the morning, kind of gets better throughout the day, and then picks up again in the evening.

Arthritis

Other things to think about: there are three joints in every finger, and each of those joints can have an associated arthritis.

When we do think about that arthritis, usually that pain is worse in the morning, kind of stiff and sore. As you get going throughout the day, it loosens up, and then at the end of the day is a little bit sore again.

Injury

When we move over to the injury side, we think about things like finger fractures. You can have a fracture associated with any of the three bones, kind of towards the tip, in the middle, or towards the base of those fingers.

You can also have injuries and sprains to the joints. Again, three joints in the finger, all of them can have associated sprains.

And finally, we think about tendon injuries, things like a mallet finger where if you were to have the finger hit with something rapidly and cause it to bend, you can tear the tendon and cause it to have an inability to get straight again.

If you’d like a more accurate diagnosis, please come see one of our board-certified hand surgeons at OrthoNebraska.