Thumb Tendonitis or De Quervain's Tendonitis - Know For Sure

Our hands are an important to almost any of our daily activities. If we are to injure our hands, wrist or even our fingers can impact how we function normally while playing, at work, at home and in the sport that we do.


Health injuries such as thumb tendonitis and De Quervain's tendonitis can impact how we do these things also. These can occur by a number of factors.

What is Tendonitis of the Thumb

First let's learn some information about what tendonitis in the thumb is. This is a condition that happens when there is irritation or swelling of the tendons that are found in the hand along the thumb side of the wrist.

What happens is the irritation that you have causes the compartment that the tendon runs in to swell. The shape of the compartment changes. The tendon can't move as it should in this compartment. Pain and tenderness occurs along the thumb side of the wrist. This pain can be felt if you go to grasp something, make a fist or by turning the wrist.

Repetitive Motion Injury can cause Thumb Tendonitis, so what is it

Tasks that require some type of repetitive movements can turn out to be a big problem. You can end up with many different types of problems. Some of them are having severe pain in the hand, you can injure the nerves that run to the hand and wrist (carpal tunnel syndrome). You may even start to have your fingers start to lock or even click (trigger finger) and you can also have severe pain in the thumb.

Thumb Tendonitis, the signs and symptoms

The first thing that will alert you is the pain on the thumb side of the wrist. This can happen gradually, but sometimes, one day it can be there. You can almost think that you have arthritis or some type of arthritic pain. This pain can start in the wrist and travel all the way up the forearm.

You can feel a severe pain when you go and grab something or when you are twisting your wrist. Swelling will probably be obvious in the thumb area. A catching or locking of the fingers including the thumb may start to happen. You may start to feel a numbness on the index finger and the back of the thumb.

What can you do?

An initial treatment when you start to feel the symptoms is to rest the thumb. Stop doing and moving the injured area. You can start to ice the thumb in 15 minute intervals. Take some over the counter anti-inflammatory medication. Use a thumb splint or brace to reduce the movement and help to support it.

An effective treatment of De Quervain's tendonitis or tendinitis in thumb is that your doctor may prescribe is a cortisone injection around the tendon to help decrease the swelling and provide pain relief.

If these do not help, then surgery may be necessary. This surgery would be come necessary if the pain continues or if it recurs. Surgical treatment is curative. It is a day surgery, with a small incision and then a splint for 10 days. The splint or braces can be used until the sutures are removed.

How to tell if you have Thumb Tendonitis For Sure

Here is a procedure to tell if you have thumb tendonitis or DeQuervain's. It is called Finkelstein test.

* What you need to do first is to make a fist by having the fingers over the thumb.

* The wrist is then bent in the direction of the little finger.

* This test is and can be quite painful if the person is suffering from tendonitis of the thumb. You will find tenderness directly over the tendons on the thumb side of the wrist when you touch them and this is very common.

Now you know how to see if you are really suffering from thumb tendonitis. Two steps and you know for sure.

This is a quick way of finding out if you are suffering from Thumb Tendonitis but you need more information on this and DeQuervain's Tendonitis and our website will show you this.


Labels: edit post