Thumb Surgery

As a doctor, I see a lot of hand arthritis. With all of the Blackberry thumb and painful, and often disabling thumb joints out there, why don’t we see more thumb surgery? The reason is likely that the artificial joints in the hand seem to involve a long and often painful recovery with a lot of occupational therapy. Unlike a knee replacement, where you can still work with your hands, type, text, etc… a thumb joint replacement in your dominant hand means you’re totally out of commission in today’s modern hand-centered work force. As a result, we do see the occasional patients getting thumb surgery with a tendon (see Thumb Surgery Alternative post), but still the same issues above apply. Is there a way to avoid thumb surgery? Yes, we’ve had good experience with injecting the patent’s own adult stem cells into the joint. I’ve posted a patient testimonial below:

Prolite Thumb Support

prolite thumb support

 

As a doctor, thumb braces such as the “Prolite Thumb Support” can help provide an additional sense of stability.  However, have you ever wondered if your thumb arthritis could be fixed without surgery by repairing the painful joint?  Is this possible?  New advances in using the patient’s own stem cells mean that a simple injection might help the thumb without the need for invasive surgeries.  Since a video is worth a few thousand words, here are some for more information.  The link above has more information as well.

Thumb Surgery Alternative

As a physician with friends who have the dreaded “blackberry thumb”, a recent web search for thumb surgery alternatives turned up this illustration. This demonstrates a traditional tendon graft surgery where one of the bones at the base of the thumb is removed and a tendon is coiled up to add a cushion. No wonder my freinds are asking me about thumb surgery alternatives. I must say that this tendon transfer surgery is “nuts”. I remember a discussion with a plastic hand surgeon about blackberry thumb and what he had to offer. “Not much” was his reply, as he admited that traditional thumb surgery was pretty poor. We discussed stem cell alternatives to thumb surgery and he was excited, as he often talked patients out of thumb surgery for basal joint arthritis because of the poor results.

The CMC joint or “basal” joint of the thumb doesn’t have good prosthetic replacement options. In addition, since it’s nearly impossible to do much without a functional thumb, pain in this joint is much more disabling than other joints. If there ever was an easy joint to treat with adult stem cells, this would be it, as it’s small and doesn’t have to bear weight while healing. While an injection of stem cells into this joint may seem like science fiction, it’s already here (thumb surgery alternative). So don’t let anyone pull out an important bone in your hand if this thumb surgery alternative might work.