Trigger Finger

Trigger Finger

Trigger finger is a really common condition in which the tendon that helps the fingers move, gets caught in a pulley at the base of the finger. So people will actually feel the pain when they press here, but they’ll see the finger trigger further out. So the problem is down here in the palm, but you actually see the finger pop.

When does this happen?

So it’s a situation that happens at any point in life, but more commonly as we get older.

Should I seek treatment?

Sometimes people can ignore it and it goes away, or sometimes it can actually get so bad that people can’t actively move the finger through a full range of motion, it actually seizes up.

How do you treat a trigger finger?

So what we try to do is intervene before we get to that stage with simple treatments, non-operative interventions and if those aren’t successful, then we do have surgery to essentially cure a trigger finger, keep it from coming back.

Describe the surgery.

The surgery is a five to ten-minute outpatient operation that can be performed awake or asleep, based on patient preference. It would involve an incision generally about one to one and a half centimeters over the area. Okay, where we’re having the mechanical problem, we’d go down to where the pulley is catching the tendon. Release the pulley, frees the tendon up, and then the tendon can glide actively from day one.

What is the recovery like?

So we have a couple of little stitches that come out at two weeks, but no splint, no cast, no therapy. It’s basically healing a skin incision which people can do on their own. So it’s really a pretty quick and easy way to get better.