Hand Pain Treatment
If you've been having hand pain, there are a few different things that it could be. One of the main culprits, especially in older people, is rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, debilitating type of arthritis. The symptoms of severe rheumatoid arthritis include major joint pain, swelling and stiffness in the affected joints. The symptoms can become bad enough that they start to effect other organs in your body and can make you chronically tired as well. When rheumatoid arthritis is severe enough, it will start to effect your daily activities, and can even cause deformation in your hand. When assessing yourself, and your symptoms, you should be sure to pay attention to the stiffness you get in your hand in the morning if it gets worse consult a . Notice how long it lasts, and if it starts to last longer than usual. Also, if you normally have pain, notice when it gets worse, and how it starts to affect your daily life and daily actions and activities. When it gets bad, you should see a Hand Surgery LA, and they can test for rheumatoid arthritis and other things that could be causing your symptoms as well.
Along with your self assessment, the doctor uses a few different techniques to determine the cause of your hand pain or stiffness. They can use imaging, a physical examination, and laboratory tests. If it is determined that you have rheumatoid arthritis, you may want to consider hand surgery. When the arthritis gets particularly severe, it can be disabling, and can stop responding to physical therapy and medication. At this stage it also becomes very painful and the pain won't go away. A carpal tunnel syndrome surgeon can tell you different types of surgical options you can have done on your hands and the joints in them to help deal with and remove this pain.
Many times, total joint replacement surgery can be done on joints in the hands and wrist area very successfully. Surgery can sometimes limit function of your hand, but take away the pain successfully, and sometimes you can gain function or at least keep function while still getting a release from the pain. These surgeries range from fusing joints together, which limits function but takes away pain, to silicone implant arthroplasty where the doctor replaces a joint with an implant. This surgery usually relieves pain, restores the proper finger alignment, and helps the hand to gain back function.
It is important to know your options and speak with your doctor about all the types of hand surgery options available to you.