Anybody have good results from cortisone shots for de Quervain's? I had shots on both sides today. Not sure if that was the best move, but what's done is done.
I'm also curious, if anyone has ever had surgery for this, and what the recovery was like.
@Stoney sorry no one has picked up on your question. I had to Google the disease name to educate myself. I highly doubt you’re alone in your diagnosis. Are you headed the surgical route?
I have had cortisone shots in that area. They never called it de quervains. they just called it a mixture of tendinitis, bursitis and arthritis. It did relieve some pain. enough where I could write for about 30 minutes. Before the shots I could not write at all. It lasted about 3 months before they re injected me. However the second time did not work. Cortisone no longer works for me unfortunately. I still have pain in that area. So it did help temporarily but long term, no. I would see if you can get a second opinion on the diagnosis. Also if physical therapy would help. Sometimes physical therapy can aggravate it. This is just my two cents though so take it with a grain of salt. For all I know you may have already done both.
It’s starting to look that way. I had the cortisone shots almost 2 weeks ago with no improvement. Frustrating but not horribly surprising, since they rarely work for me. I’m not going to rush into surgery, especially since I would have to pick which hand first. Thanks for checking in.
My mom had the surgery, but hers was combined with joint fusions and replacements on her fingers, so I’m quite certain that the de Quervain’s release was the least of her troubles.
Sounds terrible when you say “release” because I can imagine a lot of pain and lack of mobility with that. Good luck getting this figured out. Surgery, even if it helps, is a big deal!
I wouldn’t do surgery if it’s invasive. I’ve heard of people going for knee replacements and coming out of surgery with more problems than they went in with. This is my personal opinion though. I would exhaust all options before considering surgery. Then I would research the heck out of side effects documented and undocumented. Again this is just me.
You’re right, any surgery should be well researched. Knees might be one of the trickier ones, and even the research doesn’t always support some of the procedures done there.
For this condition, it’s similar to trigger finger release. For any surgery scar tissue can be a problem, as can some loss of feeling where the incision was. That happened with another surgery that I had, and took some time to recover from. Therapy was wonderful and really helped out with the scar tissue problem. The problem is that I’ve already exhausted the standard treatments, and the problem has been going on for close to 6 months now. Between the pain and starting to lose strength, it’s time to consider the surgery.
I feel for you. Literally and metaphorically. I hope when the time comes for surgery that all goes well. Hopefully it will reduce your pain and increase your range of movement. Sincerely wishing you the best 