Finger Pain in Climbers

[Quinn]

Finger injuries are perhaps the most common form of climbing related injury and represent a more complicated topic than we often give credit. Hands are complex structures and climbing requries extremely high forces transmitted to the fingers. Additionally, many climbers adopt intense training/climbing schedules that predisposes to repetitive strain injury. The differential diagnosis for climbing related injuries is very broad, and involves several activity specific injuries not often encountered in general medical practice. Additionally, most health care practitioners don't have a large number of climbers in their practice and may not be familiar with the specific considerations. So we resort to the internet, friends, self diagnosis, etc to understand our injuries. A very nice review of climbing related finger injuries was published in 2007 in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness. The text of the article presented an interesting discussion of each injury specifically. Here is a table breaking down the differential diagnosis of climbing finger pain by frequency.

I'm pretty sure Scooter has had all 20; how many have YOU had?

[Brian!]

I'd be more prone to answer if I knew how to diagnose pulley rupture, pulley strain, Tenosaaerhzwlkjaewl, etc... or could even tell the difference between them. I know what pulley pain feels like, but I like to think I didn't rupture anything.


I couldn't help but snicker at the "Finger amputation".

[*Chris*]

I couldn't help but snicker at the "Finger amputation".

Yep... super funny!

[Quinn]

The article actually included a picture of an amputated finger to demonstrate. Don't snicker though - somebody in Nova Scotia just had all 4 fingers amputed playing tug-of-war... think twice before jamming your finger into tight cracks.

[Nihoa]

put that away for eff sake!

Yep... super funny!