Swollen fingers can develop for a variety of reasons, including a medical condition such as arthritis, an injury such as a broken bone, or even a hot day. It’s the body’s natural healing response to extra fluid and blood in the fingers and can cause you to feel uncomfortable and/or unable to completely move your fingers. While it can sometimes be painful, swollen fingers are common and can be treated right at home.
Try these methods for reducing swelling in your fingers:
David William Zeltser, MD
Stiff hands can interfere with quality of life, whether it creates just a mild annoyance or a severe limitation. Treatment depends on the cause; stiffness can originate with injury, arthritis, tendonitis, or a variety of other causes. A hand surgeon can help determine the underlying problem and implement an appropriate treatment plan that may involve home exercises, hand therapy, injections, and in some cases, surgery.
Hand surgeon Mark Joseph Yuhas, MD answers your questions about rheumatoid arthritis.
What is arthritis? Can it affect the hand and wrist just the same as other joints such as the hip and knee?
Arthritis is a term that is used to describe pain and stiffness in a joint. A joint is a location in the body where two bones articulate, or move. Typically these joints have cartilage, a type of material in the body that is smooth and helps the joint to move without pain or restriction.
Arthritis involves a process where the cartilage is no longer smooth and begins to “break down”. This can result in pain, swelling, and loss of motion in many joints in the body including the fingers, hand, and wrist.
Hand arthritis can have a huge impact on performance of daily tasks. Activities like brushing your teeth or opening a jar can be painful and challenging. If you have pain and limitations due to hand arthritis, there are many products available to help improve hand function.
Hand surgeon John M. Erickson, MD answers your questions about the disease called Gout.
Gout is a common type of inflammatory arthritis typically presenting with a red, hot, swollen, extremely painful joint. Gout frequently affects joints in the big toe, ankle or knee but can happen elsewhere. Gout can also involve the fingers, wrist and elbow. A “gout attack” usually starts suddenly and the pain increases rapidly. Because of the skin redness, warmth, and pain intensity, gout attacks can be difficult to distinguish from infection.
A gout attack is caused when uric acid normally circulating in the blood deposits in joints or soft tissues and forms crystals. When the body reacts to the crystals it creates a painful inflammatory reaction. Uric acid is naturally produced in the body. It is a normal breakdown product of a chemical in many foods called purines. Our bodies remove uric acid through the urine. Gout occurs when there is either too much uric acid produced in the body or too little being removed by the kidneys. Gout attacks can cause joint damage over time. Bumps or nodules of uric acid can develop around the joints in long-term gout; these nodules are called tophi.
ESPECIALLY AS A PERSON ages, it’s common to experience pain in the hands that’s caused by arthritis. It’s most often the result of a loss of cartilage that can leave bone rubbing on bone, or what’s called osteoarthritis. Inflammatory arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis (resulting from the skin disease psoriasis) that leads to swollen fingers and toes can also be to blame.
While some are able to handle a mild degree of discomfort, arthritis in the hands is frequently more than a fleeting annoyance, and it can even lead to hand deformity if left untreated. As pain becomes more regular and severe, it can affect a person’s ability to do everything from activities they enjoy – like golf or other forms of recreation – to those things they need to do just to get through the day, from buttoning a shirt to gripping a cup of coffee in the morning.
Fortunately, there are ways you can ease arthritis-related hand pain. Read the full story.
Gout and Pseudogout are two types of arthritis than can appear suddenly and cause sore joints in the hands and sometimes in other parts of the body. This condition can be common in the elbow, wrist, finger, knee and big toe joints.
Here are 6 signs that you may have gout or pseudogout:
Psoriatic arthritis is a type of arthritis in which the lining of the joint gets inflamed and swollen, causing the joint to become loose or crooked. Psoriatic arthritis is not the same as psoriasis, which is a skin condition that causes skin to become dry, red, and flaky on any part of the body. However, according to the National Psoriasis Foundation, up to 30% of people with psoriasis develop psoriatic arthritis, so there is a link between the two.
Psoriatic arthritis, which is common in the hands, may cause your bones to lose their shape due to the smooth ends of the bones wearing out. This condition affects men and women equally. Some symptoms may include:
