Identifying & Preventing Radial Nerve Palsy

Understanding Radial Nerve Palsy’s Causes & Consequences

People are feeling things around their hand or their arm and it is really interfering with their life. Motions that they took for granted become next to impossible. When they see a doctor, they may learn that they have something called radial nerve palsy. Then they might have to see a Rosedale physical therapist.

It can be frustrating for people to go through this. Understanding radial nerve palsy’s causes and consequences is important for them to be able to learn how to handle it.

Numbness Is The Most Common Sign Of Radial Nerve Palsy

The first sign that they have this is that they might find that they have sharp or burning pain around the thumb area or with other fingers. It might be hard or impossible to straighten their arm due to tingling or numbness. There might be things felt around the back of the hand in the thumb area.

Wrist Drop & Inability To Move Or Extend Your Fingers

This means that the patient has trouble moving or extending their wrist or fingers. It is called wrist or finger drop. It doesn’t mean that the wrist or fingers drop down a level like a broken wrist or finger might. This symptom does not appear all of the time either, so its absence does not necessarily rule our radial nerve palsy. Doctors must examine all aspects of the patient’s symptoms before making a diagnosis.

Radial Nerve Palsy Must Be Diagnosed By a Professional

People should not try to self-diagnose themselves when it comes to this. They need to see a medical professional who can then thoroughly examine them. If they try to make the determination themselves, there is the risk that it is actually something else that is causing the problem. The doctor will run things like blood tests to make sure that this is the correct diagnosis and also so that other things can be ruled out. They may even go as far as to take a biopsy of the person’s nerve.

This is not something that people should sit on and hope that it gets better on their own, especially if it is from something like an injury to the arm. The situation can keep getting worse and worse and it can have a detrimental effect on their day-to-day life. By not being proactive, they can face worse things down the road.

Main Causes & Risk Factors Of Radial Nerve Palsy

There are several reasons that one might have radial nerve palsy. They might have fractured their humerus bone, slept with their arm in an awkward position, leaned with their arm over the back of a chair awkwardly, used crutches wrong, fallen or been hit on arm, or had a situation where their wrist was constricted for a long time.

Doctors usually see this from people who have broken their arm or overused it. They might have had an accident while playing sports or doing something at work. Sometimes the radial nerve can be severed, which causes a laceration of it. If this is the case, they usually recommend surgery if it is lacerated. Repetitive motion can also lead to this, like a worker swinging a hammer over and over for their job.

Patients don’t just get this from activity. If they have lead poisoning, the toxins can affect their entire nervous system, which includes the radial nerve. People who have diabetes or kidney disease may be at risk due to fluid buildup around the nerve or from inflammation.

Stretches, Exercises & Treatments For Radial Nerve Recovery

The first thing that the doctor may recommend is to take things like anti-inflammatory medicine or anti-seizure medicine. Steroid injections are an option as well as anesthetic creams. In other cases they may have their patient wear braces or splints. Massage or accupuncture is possible. The best choice may be physical therapy.

The Brooklyn physical therapist will have their patient do exercises to build up strength to make their radial nerve heal. There are also stretches that can help keep the nerve from being affected again. Surgery is often the last resort if things don’t improve, like the nerve gets entrapped or if there is a benign tumor on the nerve.

Having something happen to a nerve that’s around an oft-used part of the body can be very scary. That is why it is important to get diagnosed as soon as possible so that treatment can begin. Then it’s just a matter of getting back to the way that their life used to be before that.

Contact New York’s Top-Rated Physical Therapists Today!

Have you been diagnosed with radial nerve palsy? Contact New York’s top-rated physical therapists today! The staff at Phoenix Physical Therapy can help you with this situation and get you feeling like you did before … or better. Give them a call today to make an appointment –347-733-1916.

 

Phoenix Physical Therapy

Rosedale Location
23520 147th Avenue, Suite 1,
Rosedale, NY, 11422

Brooklyn Location
7510 4th Ave., Suite 3,
Brooklyn, NY, 11209
Phone: (347) 733-1916