NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Although wearing a splint at nighttime for arthritis at the base of the thumb does not improve pain at 1 month, it does reduce pain and disability at 12 months, according to a report published Tuesday.
Although some guidelines recommend the use of splints for "base-of-thumb" arthritis, data from randomized controlled trials have been lacking, Dr. Serge Poiraudeau, from Hopital Cochin, Paris, and colleagues note in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
To investigate, they randomly assigned 112 patients with this condition to receive usual care with or without the use of a custom-made neoprene splint to be worn at nighttime only.
At 1 month, the splint and non-splint groups still had comparable levels of pain, the report indicates.
By 12 months, however, the splint group had experienced a significantly greater drop in pain relative to the non-splint group. The splint wearers felt they were less disabled by the condition.
Eighty-six percent of splint wearers reported wearing the splint for at least 5 nights a week for the full 12-month study period and no adverse effects were noted.
SOURCE: Annals of Internal Medicine, May 19, 2009.
I know that I can tell a major difference in my thumbs when I don't wear the thumb splints at night...when they flare I also wear it in the daytimemy PT said that I was allowing my thumbs to turn inward... and that I needed to stretch them several times a day away from the palm.... and to splint in rest times.Bump...........Will a sling due? I am usually so splinted up I look like some sorta foot ball player!