Finger joint replacement buys pain relief and straighter fingers, not more movement or more strength. The scar capsule that forms around the implant is what holds the result, which is why the splinting program decides the outcome.
Fusion sounds like the worst option and is the most reliable one for pain. A fused wrist still turns palm-up and palm-down, because rotation happens somewhere else entirely, and finger fusions are set at an angle chosen for the job that finger does.
A repaired nerve regrows at about a millimeter a day, and there’s a sign you can track at home each month to watch it happening. Plus the sensory re-education that decides whether the hand ends up usable.
First-hour steps for an amputated finger, including the two mistakes that make reattachment impossible. Plus why surgeons sometimes advise against replanting, and why many fingertip wounds heal best if left alone.
A chip off the front edge of the finger’s middle joint leaves it sliding backwards out of position, and it destroys the joint within months. It only shows on a true side-on X-ray of that one finger.
A fingertip crushed in a door or under a hammer. The tuft fracture heals on its own; the nail bed underneath is the part with a deadline, and whether the nail is split or lifted is what decides it.
The check that matters after a broken finger isn’t on the X-ray. Make a loose fist: if a finger crosses over its neighbor, the bone is rotated, and rotation is the one deformity a finger can’t work around.
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.
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.