Most Common Thumb Injuries
Although thumb injuries don’t sound that severe, they might cause a lot of pain and often make it impossible to use your hand like you are used to. There are many causes for thumb injuries and most of them are temporarily. A Sprained thumb or torn bands are the most common types of injuries and they can be awfully painful. Injuries at the thumb are frequently seen in athletes wile doing exercises or playing sports. A sprained thumb is often caused because someone felt on his thumb. However, it is also caused when you hitting someone in the wrong way (accidentally or on purpose) or in the wrong angle or just using too much fore. In some cases the thumb will not sprain its bands, but broken. In this case, a splint is necessary for treatment to let it heal without chance on further injury. A split can also be used for a sprained thumb injury, but this is only done in severe cases. You don’t want to lesson its activity because than the thumb will become very stiff.
An ligament that is partially teared, is called a thumb sprain and this is the most common type of injury seen by thumbs. The main symptoms are a lot of pain and swelling. It will often make it unable for someone to grasp items. The main cause of teared ligaments is trauma, by falling on the thumb. Your doctor will use X-rays as primary diagnosis test. On the X-rays he is able to see if it is broken or just bruised/sprained. Treatment for thumb injuries consist of taking rest and not doing any strange things that might cause further injury. A splint might help giving it rest and also helps preventing further injury. However, most doctors will advice not to wear a splint because then the joint of the thumb will get very stiff. Thumb exercises are advised, stretch the thumb but stop when it start to hurt.
When your thumb is broken, the primary treatment would also be a splint. In rare cases the thumb needs to be realigned by surgery. Broken thumbs are frequently seen in fights, when your finger was stuck between a door, or when you hit it with a hammer or other tools.
You can not really prevent thumb injuries, the only thing to do is not hitting other people and try to be careful when you are working with tools.