Hand Therapist Nigel Chua A fall onto the point of the elbow. Whether you can straighten your arm against gravity decides whether this is a splint or an operation, and the metalwork sits under skin with nothing to pad it.
A pop at the front of the elbow under load, then an arm that still bends fine, so people wait. The hook test takes seconds, and the repair window closes at around two to three weeks.
The commonest adult elbow fracture, often hiding behind a normal-looking X-ray. What decides treatment is whether the fragment blocks rotation, and what decides your outcome is how early you start moving it.
Deep aching in the upper outer forearm that has been treated as tennis elbow for months without improving. The tenderness sits below the bony point rather than on it, and the trapped nerve causes pain without numbness.
The median nerve can be squeezed in the forearm as well as at the wrist, producing tingling in the same three fingers. One difference separates them: whether the palm is numb too.
Two forearm nerves carry movement but almost no sensation, so when they fail nothing feels wrong and something simply stops working. The OK sign test finds one, lifting the fingers off a table finds the other.
Adult forearm fractures are plated because the forearm is a rotating joint, and a bone healing slightly the wrong shape costs you rotation permanently. Plus the two single-bone fractures that hide a dislocation at the other end.
Forearms that pump up and stop working. The timing separates the causes: pain that arrives at a predictable point and clears minutes after stopping is a compartment pattern, and it has a real diagnosis behind it.
Bacteria inside the flexor tendon sheath is one of the few true emergencies in the hand. Kanavel’s four signs identify it in under a minute, and the wound that let it in is often too small to remember.
Two common finger infections that get confused. Paronychia sits at the nail fold and often settles early. A felon sits in the fingertip pad, builds pressure in a closed compartment, and needs draining before it reaches bone.