I'm still at a loss to understand why most everyone seems to think that AA4500 is the answer to DD. I recently had my 6 month followup appointment as a subject in the trial--at Stanford--and once again was pronounced a "success" because my cord snapped and my finger straightened. However, my palm is riddled with "lumps", I have skin tethering in my pam and on both sides of the straightened finger and my hand is slightly cupped. This is a success? I had NA on the same finger 4 years ago and all of these problems were corrected.

I asked the study doc whether (once AA4500 comes to market) my palm could be injected to fix the skin tethering and was told it wouldn't work since they wouldn't be able to put enough "pressure" on my hand to "snap" it and that AA4500 didn't work well in this situation. I realize that in many cases, getting the fingers straightened is the main concern but why is AA4500 considered better than NA?

Hi Joe,

you wrote: "You're not alone and I totally agree with you. I had two fingers injected and now have lumps at the MCP joint on my pinky. DC has aready returned, almost back to where I started on the pinky and thickening quite well on the other finger."

Interesting. I'm very concerned that the DC has gotten more aggressive in the other fingers of my injected hand (right) although to be fair, it's also gotten a, all of a sudden in the last 6 m-9 months-- more agressive in my left hand.

"Since you had both procedures done. Is there a big difference in the amount of pain involved? And how long was the recovery until there was no pain when using your hands doing manual labor? With the injections it took me almost a month untill I could grip and use wrenches without pain."

There's a *huge* amount of different in pain with the two procedures. There's hardly any with NA other than the initial "sting" of the first shots to anesthetize the hand, not even as bad as a dentist's novacaine shot and NOTHING at all compared to the injections in the trial (or the next day's popping which hurts to even think about). I had my NA with Dr. Eaton (MCP joint)and after a short nap, was out shopping and sight seeing 3 hours later, with only a band aid and no pain or restrictions at all!

I can't recommend NA enough and will probably have to do it again soon except this time I have about 6 fingers involved mostly PIP joints and lumps and adhesions in both palms. Good luck to you, hope this info helps.