Trigger Finger – Treatment

Transcript

The most common treatment for trigger finger is a steroid injection. For this, I inject steroids directly into the tunnel or pulley to coat the sheet and the tendon in steroid. This reduces the inflammation and swelling, allowing the tendon to glide smoothly again. For many patients, up to 70 to 80% of them, this can be cured. This means that one or two injections may be all they need to be completely cured of the disease. For the 20 to 30% of patients that don’t get cured from this, we then go on to surgery. Surgery involves a small incision over the first sheet known as the A1 pulley. This is completely opened up allowing the tendon to glide smoothly again. In rare cases, releasing the sheet is not enough. I then have to cut out one half of one of the tendons to make room within the other tunnels. This is one half of the FDS tendon, or flexor digitorum superficialis.