Your hands play a vital role in daily tasks like eating, dressing, and working. You use your hands to communicate with gestures and express emotion through touch. Without your hands, your independence diminishes dramatically, significantly affecting your quality of life.
Your hands are undeniably important to every aspect of daily living. After a traumatic injury, you may lose functional use of your hand if the injury is not addressed correctly with hand trauma surgery in Richmond.
Hand injuries can take many forms. For example, you may experience crushed fingers, open fractures, and lacerations that affect nerve innervation. As with any wound, infection is a common complication. Some injuries can be managed initially and referred to a hand surgeon, while others must be seen quickly. Our team can determine the treatment you need to regain functionality.
Your hand is a complex network of tendons, nerves, muscles, and bones. A hand specialist is an orthopedic doctor who specializes in the structure, anatomy, and function of the hand. This means you have access to an expert who has trained solely on conditions that affect the hand, wrist, and forearm.
Hand surgeons have advanced skills in delicate procedures like microsurgery, nerve repair, and tendon reconstruction. Hand surgeons are also proficient in the latest techniques and technologies that are specific to hand injuries. This means you have more precise and effective treatments as compared to a general orthopedic surgeon.
Finally, hand surgeons offer you comprehensive care that is tailored to your functional recovery, including care after a traumatic event in Richmond and surgical repair, such as customized rehabilitation plans to restore hand function.
Many injuries can be stabilized, so you can see a hand trauma surgeon in Richmond within a week. However, some traumatic injuries require quicker identification and repair to help restore function. The primary of those is multiple digit injuries or traumatic amputations when fingers or part of the hand is cut from the body during an accident.
Your age is also an important factor since restoring amputated digits, and function has greater success with younger patients. Complex wounds and infections may also require attention within a week.
Several types of hand surgeries can be performed. After a traumatic injury in Richmond, you may require more than one hand surgery. Dr. Galpern and his team can give you hope for restored function with a treatment and recovery plan.
Reduction and fixation are the terms used to repair a bone after it has been broken. Reduction means to put it back in place, and fixation means to anchor it, so the bone has a chance to grow together. Depending on the type of injury, you may require an open or closed reduction and fixation.
While both procedures may be performed in surgery under general anesthesia, an open reduction requires a surgical incision so our board-certified hand surgeon can visualize the bone, while a closed procedure is done without a surgical incision. Pins may be placed on the outside of the hand, which are removed after your hand is healed.
Tendons are fibers that connect your muscle to bone. Tendon injuries can happen after a traumatic accident or a tendon rupture. These repairs are often difficult because of the structure of the tendon and the intricate and complex nature of the hand. Depending on the tendon injury, the repair might be done immediately, within a couple of days, or several weeks after the injury.
Nerves that tell your fingers and hand to move may be damaged in a traumatic injury. This can mean you lose function and feeling. While some nerve injuries can heal on their own, others require surgical repair. When the damage is linked to more complicated injuries, Dr. Galpern makes the best assessment and times the surgical repair to increase your chance of full functional recovery.
This is a surgical procedure done to relieve compartment syndrome. Compartment syndrome happens when there is swelling and pressure in a small area of the body, such as the wrist or hand. This can occur after an injury when the pressure from the swelling interferes with blood flow to the area.
This type of surgery is called an arthroplasty and is commonly used in individuals who have severe hand arthritis. However, you may have joints that can benefit from replacement after a traumatic injury. This could be possible when the joint is damaged but the surrounding bone is intact.
After a traumatic amputation, when a finger or part of the hand was cut from the body during the accident, replantation may be attempted to restore as much function as possible. This surgery uses microsurgical techniques under magnification. In severe cases, you may need more than one surgery to restore the best function.
Skin grafts and skin flaps help attach skin where it is missing after a traumatic event. A healthy piece of skin may be taken from another area of the body, called the donor site. A skin graft does not maintain a blood supply, while a skin flap is taken from a nearby area and has its own blood supply.
You may be overwhelmed, scared, and unsure of what to do after a traumatic injury to your hand. We encourage you to call our office for a consultation for hand trauma surgery in Richmond with Dr. Galpern. He is a board-certified hand surgeon who specializes in the diagnostic care and treatment of the hands, using a range of treatments to restore as much function to your hand as possible. Our team is ready to help you get better.
(804) 506-3050