post op pins and needles in little finger
I had the operation on my right hand on the 25th June 2013 and am having my left hand operated on tomorrow. I notice that I keep on waking up, during the night, with my right hand having pins in needles (now including my small finger) - is this what is expected after the operation?
thank you for coming back so quickly, I'll have a word with the surgical team tomorrow before they do my left hand.
I did not have any nerve conduction studies done on either hand before they did the operation on my right hand.
My symptoms before the operation were during the night extreme pain in both hands and elbows and pins and needles in the hands. I got to the stage where I could not squeeze anything with my hands. After using them, during the day, they would both swell up and I was unable to grasp small objects - plus the pins and needles would be present thoughout the day. My hands basically felt useless. The GP did do a steroid injection in my right hand and this really helped (for a few weeks).
I will also have a word with them over the pins and needles in my other fingers at night.
Well the response to steroid injection is fairly good evidence that it was CTS but does not say much about exactly how bad it was (The surgeon will tell you that they looked at it at operation and it looked really bad!). The swelling is not really typical of CTS though. I think occasionally fingers can become numb before surgery and when the pressure is taken off the nerve and it starts to conduct signals again you can start getting the tingling and pins and needles again but it has usually gone through a stage of being like that at some time before surgery too. JB
Definitely not expected in the little finger - which is most often a sign of trouble with the ulnar nerve at the elbow. For the other fingers it rather depends on whatyour symptoms were like before surgery and how bad your nerve conduction study results were before surgery. JB