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Hand & Wrist
Your wrist is a complex joint made up of eight small bones arranged
in two rows between the bones in your forearm and the bones in your hand. Tough
bands of ligament connect your wrist bones to each other and to your forearm bones
and hand bones. Tendons attach muscles to bone. Damage to any of the parts of your
wrist can cause pain and affect your ability to use your wrist and hand.
- Injuries
- Sudden impacts: The most common method of injuring your wrist
is when you fall forward onto your outstretched hand. This can cause sprains, strains
and even fractures.
- Repetitive stress: Any activity that involves repetitive
wrist motion — from hitting a tennis ball or bowing a cello to driving cross-country
— can inflame the tissues around joints or cause stress fractures, especially when
you perform the movement for hours on end without a break. De Quervain's disease
is a repetitive stress injury that causes pain at the base of the thumb.
- Arthritis
- Osteoarthritis: In general, osteoarthritis in the wrist is
uncommon, usually occurring only in people who have injured that wrist in the past.
Osteoarthritis is caused by wear and tear on the cartilage that cushions the ends
of your bones. Pain that occurs at the base of the thumb may be caused by osteoarthritis.
- Rheumatoid arthritis. A disorder in which the body's immune
system attacks its own tissues, rheumatoid arthritis is common in the wrist. If
one wrist is affected, the other one usually is, too.
- Other diseases and conditions
- Carpal tunnel syndrome: Carpal tunnel syndrome develops when
there's increased pressure on the median nerve, which passes through the carpal
tunnel, a passageway in the palm side of your wrist.
- Kienbock's disease: This disorder typically affects young
adults and involves the progressive collapse of one of the small bones in the wrist.
Kienbock's disease occurs when the blood supply to this bone is compromised.
- Ganglion cysts: These soft tissue cysts occur most often
on the top of your wrist opposite your palm. Smaller ganglion cysts seem to cause
more pain than do larger ones.
Information courtesy of the Mayo Clinic and ProRehab Physical
Therapy.
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