Why is there a pain in hand?

    07-May-2021
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Dr KK Pandey
Now-a-days you will find people frequently complaining of pain in hand. Either their wives or parents do suffer from pain in hand quite often. Sometimes people complain of both pain and swelling in hand simultaneously. Sometimes the pain in hand is so severe in intensity that it causes disturbance in sleep during night time. Have you ever thought why do pain and swelling occur in your hand ?
If only pain in hand but no swelling
These days, majority of the people especially working class follow a daily routine where in, there is no place for daily morning walk and exercise. Heavy workload in offices and strenuous travelling day in and day out are increasing physical and mental stress. This causes weakness of shoulder muscles responsible for maintaining stability of your shoulder to keep it in proper place. This results into drooping of shoulder that exerts undue pressure upon nerves emerging from your brain and travelling to hand via your neck. This pressure on nerves finally leads to pain and tingling sensation in hand. This condition is called in medical language as Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS). This in a simple language means undue and excessive constricting pressure on a tunnel that opens from neck into an arm. This pressure on this connecting tunnel may be possibly due to other reasons also. For example, an unnatural existence of an abnormal rib (cervical rib) emerging from spine of the neck or abnormal bony protuberance of spine on both sides of neck (Transverse process) exert excessive pressure on nerves passing through the tunnel and thus leading to pain in hand. Sometimes, muscles of neck constrict abnormally and this puts nerves under pressure and a patient feels pain in hand whenever he shakes his neck. In other cases, an old chest injury sustained during previous road traffic accident becomes the main reason of pain and tingling sensation in hand.
If hand has pain and swelling both
Quite often ladies who are overweight and neither they walk regularly nor do exercise and keep sitting for hours together, suffer from the problem of pain in hand. The main reason is undue pressure on blood pipes carrying impure blood (veins) near shoulder. This causes insufficient return of impure blood upwards from hand to heart leading to abnormal accumulation of impure blood in hand and forearm. This results simultaneously into pain and swelling in hand. Sometimes if blood clots clog the blood pipe carrying impure blood and completely blocks the upward flow of impure blood leading to rapid rise in pain and swelling in hand. This condition can get worse, if prompt treatment is not undertaken.
(To be contd)