General Practitioners

• Osteoporosis
• Arthritis
  There are over one hundred kinds of wrist arthritis. The two most common types are osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis causes joint lining, or synovium, swelling and joint space narrowing. It progressively destroys the bones and soft tissues of both wrists and other joints of the body.
• Medical Weight Loss
  Your hand surgeon, physical therapist, or occupational therapist may recommend you to wear finger or wrist splints or a soft sleeve at night and for selected activities. Heat and cold therapy may help with swelling. A steroid injection can often provide temporary relief for arthritis symptoms but does not cure arthritis. Maintaining a healthy weight will reduce your risk factors of developing arthritis in larger joints and joint disease. Enrolling in a weight-loss regimen can help with pain management.
• Primary Care
  All information on this website is provided as an educational tool for the visitors and my patients. Information found on this site is not to be used for self-treatment. If you suspect an orthopedic condition, please consult your primary care physician who may refer you to a hand and upper extremity specialist or schedule an appointment at my office. For acute and traumatic injuries, please seek emergent help.
• Family Practice
  Hand and finger injuries are some of the most common injuries we all endure during our life times. It is important to not underestimate the severity of a finger injury as the improper treatment or lack of treatment compliance can result in a permanent disability and decreased hand function. Most finger injuries can be treated and managed by family practice physicians, however, depending on the physician’s comfort level and your preference, you may be referred to a hand surgeon for further evaluation and treatment.
• Emergency Care
  Most orthopedic injuries, including hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder, are not life-threatening and can be safely treated by expert care at MD West ONE Orthopedic & Spine Urgent Care Center. These include...

Gynecologists

• Pregnancy

Neurologists

• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
  Forearm muscles attach to specific points on the phalanges via their long tendons to facilitate flexing and extending finger movements. The flexor digitorum profundus (FDP) muscle is one of the forearm muscles, which gives off four tendons that travel through the carpal tunnel in the wrist and attach to the distal phalanx in each of the four fingers.
• Multiple Sclerosis
  Multiple sclerosis, stroke, and other disorders of the brain and spinal cord may sometimes cause forearm and hand numbness and tingling. Other diseases can affect the nerves in the upper limb, causing numbness, tingling, burning. If the symptoms are more diffuse, that is, in the hands and forearms (and in the legs and feet), the cause may be a condition called “peripheral neuropathy”. The pattern of numbness is not usually that of one nerve, but instead may be generalized, like the pattern of a glove. There may or may not be pain and the numbness is often constant. Diabetes, alcoholism, and old age are common known causes of neuropathy. Poisoning from metals and industrial compounds are also possible causes. Certain medications, such as cancer treatment drugs, are known to cause hand numbness and tingling. Some of these cause temporary hand numbness and tingling that resolves after completion of the chemotherapy treatment. Others may cause permanent hand numbness. Nutritional deficiencies, such as vitamin B1 deficiency, may result in hand numbness and tingling.

Psychiatrists

• Mental Health
  The majority of households with adults who have postponed elective surgeries due to coronavirus pandemic have experienced a lower quality of life, higher anxiety levels, and worsening mental health. Worsening symptoms can progress to permanent and irreversible damage and negative health consequences on overall healing and recovery. More complex treatment plans may result in significantly higher costs than the initial non-surgical, or surgical treatments would have been.
• Anxiety

Endocrinologist

• Diabetes Care

Radiologist

• MRI
  It is beneficial but not necessary that you bring to your visit any medical records and studies (X-ray, MRI, CT, nerve studies) with reports on your current condition.
• X-Rays
• Computed Tomography
  Another distinctive golf injury is fracture of the hook of the hamate, one of the small bones of the wrist. The hook is the particular part of that bone that protrudes toward your palm, and is vulnerable to injury from the club on a hard hit to the ground as the handle crosses right over the bony hook when gripping the club (see Figure 1, 1A). Hook of the hamate fractures may cause pain in the heel of the little finger side of the palm. If it irritates the adjacent ulnar nerve, it may cause numbness and tingling in the ring and little fingers. The tendons that bend the ring and little fingers are also adjacent to the hook, and movement of these fingers may be painful and give a sensation of “catching” or “clicking” if these tendons are rubbing on the fractured bone. Left untreated, the tendons can even gradually fray and rupture. In addition to physical examination, your doctor may obtain x-rays, but the fracture is often difficult to see on plain X-rays because of the overlap of the other small bones in the wrist. A special study called a CT scan is often used to visualize the area of the hamate hook in greater detail when a fracture is suspected (see Figure 2). Treatment may consist of splinting or casting if the fracture is seen very early after injury. If seen late and there is continued pain, numbness and tingling, or tendon irritation, surgery is usually performed to remove the broken bone fragment.
• Chemotherapy

Surgeons

• General Surgery
  When looking for a hand specialist, patients often want to find out who is the best hand specialist. Although such a quest is not unreasonable, please keep in mind that the best hand specialist for one patient may not be the best hand specialist for another. It is common for hospitals and clinics to market their physicians as the "best." In his book "Unaccountable," Dr. Marty Makary talks about Dr. Hodad - the most famous surgeon at one of Boston's hospitals. Unfortunately, "Hodad" was an acronym for "hands of death and destruction." Dr. Hodad had Ivy League credentials and general surgery board certification, but he was such a lousy surgeon that most of his patients often suffered life-threatening complications. Thanks to his warm bedside manner, lack of patient understanding about post-operative complications, and the hospital's lack of transparency, he was one of the most requested surgeons by patients and celebrities.
• Arthroscopy
  Arthroscopy is a minimally invasive technique of visualizing the inside of a joint. The word arthroscopy comes from two Greek words, "arthro" (joint) and "skopein" (to look). The wrist is a complex joint made up of many bones and ligaments, which hold the bones together (see Figure 1). Wrist arthroscopy allows the surgeon to diagnose and treat many problems of the wrist through a series of very small incisions (portals). In the last 5 years, the wrist has become the third most common joint to undergo arthroscopy, after the knee and shoulder. Because the incisions used with wrist arthroscopy are smaller and disrupt less soft tissue than conventional open surgery, pain, swelling and stiffness are minimized and recovery is often faster.
• Pinched Nerve
  Numerous medical conditions can cause hand pain. Tingling and hand pain may be signs of carpal tunnel syndrome, pinched nerve in the neck, and even heart attack. Diabetes eventually causes hand pain and decreased feeling in the hands due to nerve damage and decreased blood flow. Pregnancy is often the culprit behind hand pain associated with carpal tunnel syndrome. Arthritis causes hand pain and stiffness of the hand joints, such as knuckles, while infection results in hand pain associated with redness and swelling at the site of infection.
• Joint Replacement
  Surgical treatment is recommended when the conservative, non-surgical intervention fails to adequately control patient’s symptoms. Surgical options include removing the arthritic bones, joint fusion, which makes the joint solid and prevents movement at the wrist, and joint replacement.
• Hand Surgery
  The field of hand surgery focuses on the non-surgical and surgical treatment of orthopedic conditions and injuries that involve the hand and wrist.
• Orthopedic Surgery
  . I attended medical school at Creighton University School of Medicine, followed by a surgical internship at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, and an orthopedic surgery residency at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM.
• Neurosurgery
  In January 2020, Methodist Physicians Clinic orthopedic surgeons joined MD West ONE effective March 1, 2020, creating the largest group of orthopedic, neurosurgery, and spine specialists in our region. This partnership allows us to provide more efficient and cost-effective care to our patients.
• Arthroscopy
  Fractures may be stabilized with pins, screws, plates, rods, or external fixation (see Figure 2). External fixation is a method in which a frame outside the body is attached to pins which have been placed in the bone above and below the fracture site, in effect keeping it in traction until the bone heals. Sometimes arthroscopy is used in the evaluation and treatment of wrist fractures. Your hand surgeon will determine as to which treatment is the most appropriate in your individual case.
• Reconstructive Surgery
  Recovery time varies considerably, depending on the severity of the injury, associated injuries, and other factors as noted previously. It is not unusual for maximal recovery from a wrist fracture to take several months. Some patients may have residual stiffness or aching. If the surface of the joint was badly injured, arthritis may develop. On occasion, additional treatment or reconstructive surgery may be needed.

Plastic Surgeons

• Plastic Surgery
  Board-certified plastic surgeons can complete a one to two-year hand surgery fellowship to practice hand and wrist surgery. Although they are not trained to fix hand and wrist fractures during their plastic surgery residency, they learn this skill during their hand surgery fellowship. They are not qualified to repair orthopedic-related injuries above the wrist. However, they are considered experts in skin grafts and skin flaps.

Dermatologists

• Cyst
• Burns

Physical Therapists

• Sports Medicine
• Physical Therapy
  Finger injuries are very common in basketball players and range from minor sprains to fractures and dislocations that may require surgery. The key to quick recovery rests on early evaluation (within the first 24 to 48 hours after the injury occurs), correct diagnosis, and appropriate treatment along with physical therapy and patient compliance. Since the severity of symptoms does not necessarily correlate with the severity of the finger injury, it is important, especially for serious basketball players, to be evaluated by an orthopedic hand specialist. Taping an injured finger and postponing an evaluation by a hand specialist not only delays the appropriate treatment but often results in a poor outcome, which can lead to finger surgery that would have otherwise been unnecessary.
• Occupational Therapy
  Just like hand and wrist surgery, elbow surgery involves interdisciplinary approach to elbow care as the treatment success depends on the elbow surgeon's technical skill and knowledge, post-surgical elbow therapy, occupational therapy, and the treatment and management of an underlying medical issue, which may have been the cause for a particular elbow condition. For example, I have successfully treated patients with severe elbow arthritis by total elbow joint replacement. However, in addition to me performing the total elbow joint replacement, the treatment success was a direct result of patient compliance and physical therapy.
• Tennis Elbow
  Some of the most common elbow surgery conditions seen in my office are Cubital Tunnel Syndrome, Distal Biceps Tendon Rupture, Elbow Arthritis, Elbow Fracture, Elbow Pain, Golfer's Elbow, Tennis Elbow, and Olecranon Bursitis.