Hand Therapist Nigel Chua 
Hand-arm vibration syndrome is nerve and blood vessel damage from years of vibrating tools: white fingers in the cold, numbness, clumsiness. Early stages can partly improve once exposure is cut; advanced HAVS is permanent.
Forearm pain that keeps climbing after a fracture, crush or tight cast, with a hard forearm and agony when the fingers are straightened, is compartment syndrome until proven otherwise. Go to the ER now: muscle starts dying within hours.
Numbness on the back of the thumb with completely normal strength points to Wartenberg’s syndrome, a pinched sensory branch of the radial nerve. Most cases settle in 6 weeks to 6 months once the watch or strap comes off.
A perilunate dislocation needs the ER the same day and surgery within about a week, yet around a quarter are missed because the front-on X-ray looks almost normal. Expect 8 to 12 weeks in a cast and 6 to 12 months of recovery.
A mucous cyst is a small fluid-filled bump on the end finger joint, caused by arthritis underneath, and it often grooves the nail. Don’t pop it: surgery that removes the cyst and the bone spur is the fix that usually holds.
A sprained finger collateral ligament usually stops hurting in 3 to 6 weeks, is sport-ready by about 3 months, and stays swollen for 6 to 12 months. Buddy tape and early movement beat a rigid splint.
A hand cut needs more than stitches if a finger won’t bend or straighten, feels numb on one side, or the blood spurts. The checks to do before it’s closed, which cuts are emergencies, and how long healing takes.
Elbow arthritis hurts at the ends of the range, not the middle, and takes your straightening first. Most cases are managed with load changes and daily range work; debridement commonly gives back 20 to 40 degrees.
A hard, fixed lump on the back of the hand that never changes size is usually a carpal boss, a small bone spur, not a ganglion. Most need nothing done; painful ones usually settle with 6 to 8 weeks of offloading.
If your thumb won’t lift off a table 4 to 12 weeks after a wrist fracture, the EPL tendon has likely ruptured. It won’t heal on its own: the 10-second test, the warning signs, and tendon transfer recovery week by week.