Surgical Treatment of Upper Extremity Pain

If the patient with hand pain remains without significant relief and without recovery of function after appropriate pharmaceutical and physical modality treatments, it is appropriate to consider a surgical approach to the pain. Categories of pain amenable to a surgical approach are pain caused by nerve compression, pain caused by a neuroma, and joint pain of neural origin. Compressed nerve should be decompressed and depending on the intraoperative findings a neurolysis also should be performed. Painful neuroma must be resected to stop the pain generator. For a painful joint, the biomechanics of that joint must first be stable before denervation.