my husband had his op on 27th april 09, they operated on 3 fingers on one hand but left the thumb for another time low and behold he got an infection in the wound. i took him backwards and forwards to hospital for dressing changes everyday for 2 weeks they plied him with loads of tablets but after the 2 weeks admitted him to hospital for i v antibiotics he now goes every other day to have it dressed and has not been pain free for weeks and most of the time its mega pain, we have been to the physio but he said it will be a very long process as he has lost the use of the whole hand. The hospital said he has been unlucky. we were wonderin if anyone else has been so UNLUCKY. the whole process has put him off having the other hand done but his fingers are in the palm of his hand his father had the same problem and his sister has had 3 ops so far.

Many thanks for your concern. My husband will see his consultant today at the moment his little finger is changing from purple to red to black with so much pain he cannot sleep. which is making him bad tempered and depressed. he now wishes he had, had at least the little ringer removed which still may happen. we will look into the needle treatment for the other hand many thanks

A good part of the reason for out-patient procedures is that the less time you spend in a hospital the less likely you are to get an infection and with hospitals this includes drug resistant bacteria. With NA the procedure is performed in the doctor's offices and so the exposure to bateria is greatly reduced.

Skin functions to keep out bacteria and with open hand surgery the skin is peeled back for 90 minutes and then sewn back into place. This makes exposure more a problem and the longer healing process also adds to the patient's vulnerability.

With my NA procedures I was instructed not to wash my hands for 24 hours to prevent infection and that was it. I took no antibiotics whatsoever.

When I researched having a fasciectomy performed the high rate of complications (6% with severe complications and roughly another 12% with serious problems) caused me to rethink the surgery and that was when I learned about NA, something neither my local doctor or the expert hand surgeon had any knowledge of and the hand surgeon naturally preferred the more expensive and lucrative open hand surgery - after all he was not going to be inconvenienced by any complications of my surgery.