Hand & Wrist Surgery
The hand is the part of the body people notice losing. A stiff finger or a weak grip changes work, eating and sleep – which is why hand problems are worth treating properly rather than waiting out.
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- Early movement,
less stiffness - Most operations
are day care - Repaired nerves
regrow slowly
What we treat
Hand surgery covers the bones, joints, tendons, nerves and skin of the hand, wrist and forearm. In practice, most patients arrive with one of the following.
- Fractures Of the wrist, hand or fingers, including injuries that need plates, screws or wires
- Carpal tunnel syndrome Numbness and tingling in the thumb, index and middle fingers, often worst at night
- Trigger finger A finger that catches or locks as it bends
- Tendon injuries Including cuts to flexor or extensor tendons
- Nerve injuries After trauma
- Ganglion cysts On the wrist or hand
- Arthritis Of the thumb base and small joints
- Old injuries that healed badly Leaving stiffness, deformity or weakness
Small structures, little room for error
Three things make hand injuries worth taking to a surgeon early.
- Stiffness sets in fast
- A finger immobilised too long stiffens, and a stiff finger is much harder to fix than a broken one. Early, controlled movement is part of the treatment.
- Small displacements matter
- A few millimetres of rotation in a finger fracture that would be irrelevant in a thigh bone will cross your fingers when you make a fist.
- Nerves recover slowly
- Repaired nerves regrow at roughly a millimetre a day. Repairing them promptly is what makes the difference to feeling returning at all.
What a first visit involves
We examine the hand for movement, strength and sensation, and X-ray it where a bone or joint may be involved. Bring any previous films.
Many hand conditions – trigger finger, early carpal tunnel, a stable fracture – are treated without an operation, using splinting, injection or a hand-therapy programme.
If surgery is needed
Most hand operations are day-care procedures done under regional anaesthesia, so you are awake but the arm is numb, and you go home the same day.
Recovery depends far more on the therapy that follows than on the operation itself. We will give you a movement programme and a review date before you leave.
Questions patients ask
Frequently asked questions
Answers to what patients ask most about hand and wrist problems, from numbness at night to getting back to work.
My hand goes numb at night. Is that serious?
It is the classic description of carpal tunnel syndrome, where a nerve is compressed at the wrist. It is very treatable, and treating it earlier gives a better result – long-standing compression can leave permanent numbness and wasting of the thumb muscle. Worth being assessed rather than living with it.
I broke a finger weeks ago and it is still crooked. Is it too late?
Not necessarily. A finger that has healed in a poor position can often be re-broken and set correctly, or corrected with an osteotomy. It is a bigger operation than treating it fresh would have been, which is the argument for coming in early – but it is rarely too late to improve.
Will I need my hand in plaster?
Sometimes, but less often and for less time than patients expect. Where a fracture is fixed surgically, the fixation itself holds the bone, which frees us to start moving the joints early – and early movement is what prevents stiffness.
How soon can I go back to work?
It depends entirely on what you do. Desk work is often possible within days; work involving grip, vibration or lifting takes weeks and sometimes longer. Tell us what your job actually involves and we will give you a realistic date rather than a generic one.
Get it looked at early
Hand problems reward early treatment more than almost anything else in orthopedics. If something is not settling, come in.
