Suggest treatment for tingling in fingers after hand injury
Patient: After a car accident (more than 8 months ago) my right wrist was having super sharp pains on the left and right sides when I picked up something. It also was locking up and felt like it needed to be cracked. The hand specialist had me wear a brace with top and bottom supports that I absolutely could not tolerate because it made the top of my hand and wrist hurting and got really tingly and cold. He gave me one without the top support and a cortisone injection. I wore it for 8 weeks. For two weeks I didn’t wear anything when I then started getting constant tingling on the top of my thumb, pointer finger, top of my hand and wrist...no symptoms on the bottom. Since, I have had constant tingling in my right thumb and pointer finger. I have a brace on most of the time, otherwise it is much worse and gets very cold and hurts on the top of my wrist. You can physically feel the temperature difference between each hand. Today I had an EMG and the one where they put needles in your muscles. One of the shocks was supposed to go only down into my thumb, but it made horrible pain in my pinky finger. When he did my cercal spine area (I have spondylosis) it went up into my head and not down my arm. After this test he wrote the report and I saw the hand specialist. He said my EMG and tests were normal!!! ... as he was inspecting my hand, which was in a constant tingle and very cold. The report did say I may have a neuroma on the nerve above my wrist that goes into my thumb, but the hand doc said he didn’t think this was the case, even though he could touch the area above my thumb up to above the inside of my wrist and it would produce strong tingles in my thumb on demand. He said then said there was nothing he could do for me. I wanted to cry; please help. Doctor: Hello ! I understand your concern 1 In my opinion the symptoms you describe may be related to a nerve injury . A neuroma is an abnormal overgrouth of the nerve in the region of the injury , after the nerve has been cut off from the trauma. It develops some time after the trauma. The changes in color and temperature in both hands are in favor of a nerve injury. Your symptoms also mimic the so called carpal tunnel, which is caused by the compression of the median nerve at the wrist. I would recommend you to go to a neurosurgeon specialist for the peripheral nervous system  intervention . In both the possible situations I described above a small intervention would be very helpful to you. I recommend you not to wait too much , because these situations become worse and irreversible later if not treated. Hope to have been helpful. Best wishes, Dr. Abaz Quka