Written by Vanessa Kirkham
Suffering from a sporting hand injury?
Don’t ignore it!
See our Hand Therapist and get back to playing sooner
Hand and wrist injuries are common during sporting activities. Approximately 25 % of all sports-related injuries involve the hand or wrist and this can have a significant impact, especially if initially disregarded and treatment is delayed.
Prompt evaluation and treatment by an expert is key in returning the sports person to training and competition.
Sporting injuries that would benefit from seeing the hand therapist include hand and wrist pain, thumb injuries, finger joint injuries, fractures and flare ups of chronic conditions that are causing pain.
Some injuries obviously need medical intervention or surgery prior hand therapy such as fractures of the hand as seen below.
But there are many injuries that simply get ignored and if left untreated can lead to delay in returning to sport and problems in the future. Injured your finger at Netball last night? Now it’s swollen and difficult to move? Landed on your hand awkwardly at cricket?
Dislocations or fracture dislocations and ligament injuries to fingers, thumbs and wrists, particularly those that spontaneously reduce on the field, can often be overlooked, with the thinking that ‘if you can run, you can play’! A hand injury will prevent you from being able to train and practice.
Prompt hand therapy treatment and advice, provision of custom made splinting and taping that protects the injury whilst the surrounding structures are healing, with a balance of specific exercises to prevent stiffness from occurring allows you to return to training and play sooner. It also prevents ongoing pain and deformity.
For more information come and see Vanessa Kirkham, our resident expert Hand Therapist at Manly and Mona Vale MGS Physio.