Wrist Injury: An Overview

The wrist is a part of the body that is used in nearly all daily activities, however given it’s mobility and frequency of use, it is often a place of injury. Since a lot of tendons, ligaments and muscle pass through this small and mobile area, there are quite a lot of different injuries that can occur to the wrist. Today we will discuss and present a general overview of wrist injuries, and go into more details about treatment and prevention in later posts.

What Kind Of Wrist Injuries Are There?

Generally you can separate the injuries into two separate groups, acute injuries and chronic injuries. For those that don’t know an acute injury is something that happens in one point of time, you might be playing a basketball match and fall on the floor and sprain your wrist, this is an acute injury. A chronic wrist injury is one that occurs as a result of repetition, bad biomechanics, and too much force constantly through an area, and occurs over a period of time.

Acute Wrist Injuries

• Sprain: A sprain occurs to any of the ligaments in the wrist. The most common causes are because of a specific incident, like falling on your hand.
• Strain: Occurs when there is damage to the muscles of the wrist.
• Break: A fracture is the most common kind of break at the wrist.

Chronic Wrist Injuries

The most common chronic wrist injury that most of you would have heard of is carpal tunnel syndrome. The carpal tunnel of the wrist has many tendons that run through the area, and also a nerve called the median nerve. Carpal tunnel syndrome usually happens when there is damage to these tendons and is usually a result of repetitive movement. The swelling and inflammation will compress the median nerve, and cause more pain and discomfort.

Treatment For Wrist Injuries

If you have a wrist injury, it is common to use a wrist brace to help stop the pain during movement, and to protect the wrist initially. Here is a great value wrist brace, and you can check out more at amazon if you click through.

Although all wrist injuries will be treated slightly different. The same basic principles apple. Rest is initially needed to ensure that the injury is not aggravated. The healing process can begin and the tissues can start to mend. If you are able to perform a movement or an exercises pain free, then you can do it. Ensure that you put ice to reduce the inflammation, and use a compression bandage if you need to stop the movement for some time.

Once the pain is reduced, it is necessary to perform strengthening exercises to ensure that there is no repeat of the injury and also to prevent stiffness in the joint, and weakness in the muscles. We will talk more about exercises for each specific injury in later posts. Other rehabilitation methods that may help will include, massage, taping and bracing, ultrasound, anti inflammatory medications in some cases and an exercise program. Watch out for more detailed posts about each specific wrist injury, I will post them here as well!

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