Time to Improvement After Corticosteroid Injection for Trigger Finger

Abstract

Purpose Trigger finger is a commonly occurring hand condition that presents with symptoms of pain, clicking, locking, and catching of the finger. A common non-operative management option is corticosteroid injection. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the short-term patient response to corticosteroid injections for trigger finger. Methods The patients of six fellowship-trained orthopedic hand surgeons who underwent a corticosteroid injection for trigger finger between June 2019 and October 2019 were invited to participate in this study. Patients were contacted by phone at one week, two weeks, and three weeks after the injection to complete a questionnaire regarding their pain and triggering symptoms. Medical records were also reviewed to collect basic demographic data. Results A total of 452 patients were included in the study. At the final follow-up, 82.4% of patients reported complete pain relief, 16.3% had partial relief, and 1.2% had no relief from their pain. For their triggering symptoms, 65.9% reported complete triggering relief, 30.4% had partial relief, and 3.5% had no triggering relief. It took an average of 6.6 days following injection for patients to experience complete pain relief, and an average of 8.1 days for patients to experience complete triggering relief. Conclusions This analysis found that most patients experience relief of pain and triggering at three weeks following corticosteroid injection. The majority of patients experienced some pain relief within the first week following corticosteroid injection, while improvement in triggering appeared to lag behind pain relief.

Day-by-day symptom relief after corticosteroid injection for trigger digit: a randomized controlled study of two techniques

“…This might be a coincidence, and a long-term followup of the participants might show if this is a true The sequence of relief of symptoms was similar after both injection techniques: pain seems to subside first, followed by improvement of stiffness while triggering seems to linger (Figure 3). These results are consistent with the findings by Seigerman et al (2021), but the timing of symptom relief differed. While they found that 82% had complete improvement in pain and 65% triggering at 3 weeks, our corresponding results were 78% and 45%, respectively.…”

“…Furthermore, there are few studies that focus on the time aspect of symptom relief after this treatment. One study showed that triggering was resolved in 79% of the patients within a month and that the mean number of days to resolution of trigger phenomenon was 8.8 (Yak et al., 2020); another found that most patients experience relief of pain and triggering by 3 weeks after injection, with triggering lagging behind pain relief (Seigerman et al., 2021).…”

Patient preference for trigger finger treatment

“…Many patients, when given the option of cortisone injection, want to know how soon they might see improvement. Seigerman et al [ 33 ] investigated time to improvement after cortisone injection in a study involving 452 patients and found that most patients experience relief of pain and triggering at 3 wk following cortisone injection[ 33 ]. They reported that the majority of patients had some pain relief within the first week after cortisone injection.…”

Usage of Corticosteroids in Musculoskletal Disorders

“…Treatment can either involve surgery to cut pulley or local corticosteroid injection. Corticosteroid injection shows a significant improvement in patient's symptoms, so it is recommended in most of the patients suffering this condition [11].…”

“…In this treatment, there are no such side effects as the systemic use, and on the other hand the medicine can act on the problematic area, like injecting the injectable form of triamcinolone in the joint space. Usually to eliminate patient's pain in this treatment, corticosteroid is mixed with local anesthetic agents like lidocaine and is injected directly in the joint space either landmark-guided or sonographicguided [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”