When Is Hand Surgery Necessary?

Your hands and wrists are complex body parts that help you grip, push, pull, lift, drive, cook, and perform countless other tasks. You use your hands so often and for so many things, chances are you don’t really think about them—until you experience a problem. 

Hand surgery experts David Chao, MD, and Anisa Yalom, MD, and the team of experienced providers at OasisMD Lifestyle Healthcare in San Diego, Encinitas, and Temecula, California, often get asked at what point is surgery necessary when dealing with a hand or wrist issue. 

The answer depends on the type of hand/wrist condition or injury you have and how well it responds to other interventions, like medication or physical therapy. Before recommending hand surgery, your provider reviews your symptoms and orders tests to determine the severity of your condition. 

If you’re wondering about whether you need hand surgery, it’s best to schedule a consultation for a comprehensive evaluation and personalized treatment recommendation. In the meantime, keep reading to learn some common reasons that make hand surgery necessary. 

When hand surgery is necessary

The good news is that many hand and wrist conditions don’t need surgical intervention to successfully treat. Though everyone’s situation is unique, your OasisMD Lifestyle Healthcare hand specialist may recommend surgery for one or more of the following reasons:

• You have an injury that severely affects your hand/wrist function and/or mobility.
• You have an injury in a location that requires surgical repair for successful recovery,
• Nonsurgical treatments and therapies aren’t helping your condition.
• You aren’t able to perform your normal daily activities.
• Your symptoms are extremely painful and not improving.
• You’re experiencing numbness or tingling in your fingers, wrists, or hands.
• You’re having a hard time moving your fingers and thumbs.

Your hand surgeon may also recommend surgical treatment if you have a deformity that affects the structure, appearance, or functionality of your hands. 

Hand conditions commonly treated with surgery

At OasisMD Lifestyle Healthcare, our providers use different hand surgeries to treat many injuries and conditions that affect the wrists and hands. Some of the most common hand/wrist conditions treated with surgery include but aren’t limited to:

• Carpal tunnel syndrome
• Injured/damaged nerves
• Wrist, hand, finger fractures
• Trigger finger
• Teninopathies
• Arthritis
• Missing/insufficient/damaged skin (skin grafts)
• Sports or work-related injuries
• Ganglion cysts
• Infections (debridement and drainage)

Our providers are experts in microvascular and reconstructive hand surgery techniques to help restore the appearance, structure, and function of your hands and wrists. Hand surgery is generally very safe, although, like all surgeries, it comes with some risks, like infection, loss of feeling/mobility, and bleeding. 

Depending on the type of surgery required, you may receive either local or general anesthesia and the length of surgical time varies based on the severity of your condition and the procedure needed to repair it. 

While you heal, our providers prescribe physical and/or occupational therapy. This helps you speed recovery and get the most benefit out of your procedure by restoring maximum function to your hands and wrists. 

Discover if hand surgery is right for you by scheduling a consultation with a hand surgery expert at OasisMD Lifestyle Healthcare in Southern California.