Pain and Swelling between Joints on Hand
When exposed to extreme cold, fingers and hands can suffer frostbite. As that body part recovers from the frostbite, the victim of the frostbite must endure a marked amount of pain.
Such pain differs significantly from another sort of pain and swelling between joints on hand. That alternate pain intensifies with movement. That pain becomes worse at night. That pain is the result of a repetitive strain injury (RSI).
Anyone who manages to repeatedly strain the tendons and ligaments in their hand invites injury to hand. If left untreated such an injury could cause severe hand pain. Failure to seek medical help for such an injury could lead to development of wrist or forearm pain. Still, not every patient who visits a doctor and complains about pain of the hand or finger presents with an RSI.
A patient who enters a doctor’s office and complains about painful finger joints might have a family history of hypothyroidism. That hormonal disorder interferes with the body’s ability to use calcium. Because the bones and joints fail to get an adequate amount of calcium, each bone and each joint begin to show symptoms that resemble those of other family members, family members with a similar history.
Hypothyroidism can also affect the body’s metabolism. The patient who fails to seek treatment for hypothyroidism could develop fever and chills. Those symptoms underline the degree to which pain in the fingers, as caused by an RSI, differs from similar pain, pain that results from the poor performance of a thyroid gland.
The above paragraphs have shown that there are at least two reasons why a patient may walk into a doctor’s office and complain about joint pain. Such a patient might have a malfunctioning thyroid, or an RSI. Yet those two conditions are not the only cause of hand and finger problems. Such problems crop-up as the body begins to “feel its age.”
Medical symptoms such as finger or wrist pain can develop when a person suffers from arthritis. A woman with arthritis might note a swelling in her joints. She might find that she can no longer wear her wedding ring. More irritating, no doubt, would be her inability to move her fingers with ease. She would probably find it difficult to cook and sew.
Hands affected by arthritis have a particular sensitivity to the cold. Hands that have been damaged by an RSI often display a progression of that damage, a progression that moves up the arm. If left untreated, an RSI could lead to problems that are associated with a swelling arm. A patient with arthritis does not exhibit the same sort of progressive changes.
In its early stages, the treatment for arthritis focuses on pain relief. Treatment for an RSI involves temporary immobilization of the affected body region. In their early stages, arthritis and damage caused by an RSI are two very different medical conditions. As arthritis and an RSI become worse, the treatment for both conditions is the same. That treatment generally calls for surgery.
