UKC

Chronic PIP joint inflamation

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 egg 07 Aug 2023

About 5 months ago I started having issues with swelling, stiffness, and pain in the PIP joint in the middle finger on my right hand.

There was no specific incident that provoked the injury so I have to think it was from overuse (I had been using a hang board for about 3 months).

Since then I have been unable to climb. I only have climbed once since. I tried doing some pull-ups the other day and the swelling the following day was intense.

On the average day I cannot close my right hand to make a fist.

I have tried cold therapy (seems to make it worse) and ibuprofen gel (reasonably effective for pain relief).

Does anyone have any advice or experience with this?

In reply to egg:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/injuries/finger_care_for_climbers-14850

I have DIP swelling, diagnosed by a physio as joint synovitis as explained in the article above. Currently having two weeks off climbing/ training and just doing some very light recovery no hangs and finger care as described in the UKC article. I’m going for a follow up to get a recovery plan for when I get back to climbing. I’d recommend seeing a specialist physio if you can, it’s really helpful to have someone diagnose and help make a specific plan. 

edit - to say what was really interesting (obvious though this is when you step back) was the physio’s observation on how our routines with climbing (e.g. for me always projecting/ high intensity stuff) and our tendency to certain grip types (e.g for me crimps) and our tendency to ignore balance (e.g. for me a very weak back 2 despite being able to one arm the BM2000 middle slot pretty easily) means we cause these injuries and then just aggravate them. Need to stop, recover it, then reflect on how/ what we bring back in to intensity/ volume/ variety in the longer term to avoid it becoming recurrent/ chronic.  

Post edited at 21:36
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