Hand or Wrist Arthritis Diagnosis & Pain Specialists NYC

At Manhattan Pain and Sports Associates you’ll get the arthritis of the hand or wrist pain management and doctor’s care you need to reduce or eliminate your hand or wrist pain. Because when you’re in pain — whether it’s from an accident, age, working on a computer, sporting injury or ailment — you want pain relief quickly. Appropriate and targeted pain management and treatment starts with a proper diagnosis from our NYC pain management specialist.

Arthritis of the Hand or Wrist

When you feel pain in the joints of your hands and fingers it may be due to arthritis, a disease that affects the soft tissue in your joints. Arthritis can cause severe pain for a short time or it can become chronic. The condition may be genetic or the result of an injury.

Your joints continue to break down as the cartilage becomes worn, eventually leading to structural changes in your hands. The nerves, muscles, ligaments, skin, fat and other soft tissue surrounding the joints also can deteriorate when you have arthritis in your hands or wrists. Arthritis pain can lead you to seek relief from a Manhattan pain management doctor.

When and Whom It Strikes

Arthritis is a disease that primarily afflicts the elderly, but it can strike most anyone. Osteoarthritis tends to appear in women more than men and at a much earlier age. As many as 60 percent of adults over the age of 60 experience arthritic symptoms in their hands and wrists, while closer to 90 percent of those over 75 are plagued with symptoms.

Women are three times more prone to have rheumatoid arthritis than men. You are more likely to develop symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, which afflicts about one percent of the American population, between the ages of 20 and 30.

What You Can Expect

Symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis are similar, but the stiffness and pain you feel when you wake up in the morning may be more lasting and stronger with rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is accompanied by side effects such as weakness, loss of appetite and general discomfort. Both can lead to crippling deformities in your hands — so much so that you can barely use them.

Other side effects can include:

  • Clicking, grinding and cracking in your fingers and wrists
  • Pain that worsens when you use your hands
  • Joint deformity
  • General weakness that extends to your arms
  • Swelling and tenderness in your joints
  • Pain that’s sometimes reduced with movement

Causes of Arthritis

One of the most common reasons you develop osteoarthritis in your hands is because you’ve been using them your entire life. They just wear out. Degeneration of the joints is common as you age. An NYC pain management doctor may discover through your detailed description of your symptoms that other factors have contributed to your condition:

  • Trauma to your hands
  • A broken wrist
  • Infections in your joints
  • Overuse

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that may affect other joints in your body in addition to your hands and wrists. Usually, this is an inherited condition. The hands and feet often are the first places the disease attacks, and most often it develops in the same joints on both extremities.

Help Is Available

Through your Manhattan pain management specialist, you can learn to live with arthritis and make lifestyle accommodations that can drastically reduce your suffering. You’ll most likely start a regimen of non-surgical treatment options to reduce the pain. These include:

  • Reducing swelling with heat and ice
  • Gently exercising your hands and wrists
  • Splinting the painful joints for short periods of time
  • Taking anti-inflammatory medications
  • Trying cortisone injections to reduce the pain
  • Stopping activities that cause you pain

In rare cases you may have to undergo fusion surgery, joint replacement, or reconstructive surgery if the pain isn’t relieved by conservative methods. Surgery can help if there are extreme deformities or you lose mobility.

Get the Pain Relief You Need For Arthritis of the Hand or Wrist

Your NYC pain management doctor’s goal is to get you back to your normal routine with minimal downtime. After your arthritis of the hand or wrist diagnosis is confirmed, your doctor begins your pain management and treatment plan with the most conservative pain relief treatment. You’ll always receive non-invasive pain relief before your doctor turns to more invasive procedures like surgery.

Manhattan Pain and Sports Associates
51 East 25th St, 4th Floor, Ste B
New York, NY 10010
(212) 533-3954