We use our hands and wrists to help us accomplish countless tasks at the office and during our free time every single day. Several tendons in the wrist area help us perform these actions, but if one or more of these tendons becomes overstressed, it can become inflamed. These tendons already work in close proximity to other structures and pass through narrow openings, so if they grow larger as a result of inflammation they can struggle to perform their tasks or may irritate nearby tissues, further complicating the issue in your wrist.
Fortunately, wrist tendonitis tends to respond very well to proactive treatment, and the most common and effective treatment for tendonitis of the wrist is physical therapy. In today’s blog, we explore how a physical therapist can help to calm wrist inflammation and get you back to doing all the normal hand and wrist motions without discomfort.
Understanding Wrist Tendonitis
Wrist tendonitis can develop in a few different ways. There is early stage wrist tendonitis, which is characterized by mild to moderate irritation and inflammation of one or more tendons in the wrist. Left untreated, wrist tendonitis can transition into tendinopathy, which is the name of the condition when tendonitis becomes more intense and chronic. Two other conditions – tenosynovitis and De Quervain’s tendonitis – describe inflammation of the protective sheath around the tendons and tendonitis on the thumb side of your wrist, respectively.
Pain is the most obvious sign that there may be an issue with your wrist, but other symptoms that could be suggestive of wrist tendonitis include:
- Decreased range of motion
- Tenderness
- Swelling
- Stiffness
- Worsening symptoms when bending or rotating the wrist
If you’re dealing with any of these symptoms, it’s a smart idea to connect with a medical professional. As we noted above, not only does wrist tendonitis typically respond well to conservative treatment, but symptoms often worsen if you neglect to pursue treatment, so seeking out care is wise.
Diagnosing And Treating Wrist Tendonitis
One of the nice things about physical therapy in Minnesota is that you do not need a referral in order to seek out PT care. Since mild to moderate wrist pain is rather low on the list of reasons why you’d seek out medical care, you can save some time and money by going right to a physical therapy clinic for an assessment instead of waiting weeks or months to be seen by your primary care physician only to be referred to PT. Our therapists have a wealth of experience assessing the health of your soft tissues with physical examinations, manual techniques and movement exercises, so you can get a diagnosis and begin a treatment plan much sooner by heading right to a PT’s office if you believe you have wrist tendonitis.
Treatment for wrist tendonitis will focus on two specific types of care. The first will be protection. We need to limit stress on the area to give time for this inflammation to resolve. If you continue stressing the area, inflammation can persist and worsen. Some common ways we’ll work to protect your wrist include:
- Recommending you avoid specific activities
- Bracing/Splinting
- Posture and form correction to limit strain on the wrist while performing certain tasks
- Medications to help combat inflammation
Short-term rest can aid in inflammation relief, but that’s only part of the equation. Eventually, you’ll also need to begin to work to strengthen the wrist area so that supportive structures can act as a stress shield for your wrist tendons. When the muscles and supportive tissues in the wrist can better handle stress, it limits the strain that the ligaments are under during regular activities. We’ll help you strengthen these areas with manual therapy exercises, in-clinic physical therapy exercises, and home-based routines that you can perform between in-person sessions. Most patients make great improvements by pursuing strength training PT exercises over the course of a few weeks, but these exercises can also be preventative in nature, so you don’t need to stop improving the health of your wrist just because your discomfort has subsided.
Wrist tendonitis can make simple movement extremely uncomfortable, and you shouldn’t accept this new normal. Instead, connect with a team of physical therapists who can help make your wrist tendonitis a thing of the past. For more information, or for help with a different physical issue, reach out to the team at OrthoRehab Specialists today at (612) 339-2041.
PT of Costa Rican National Soccer Team for 2007 World Cup in Victoria, CAN. Clinical Instructor for University of Minnesota Doctor of Physical Therapy Affiliations
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