Hello,

I was just curious about everyone's opinion on my experience.

To start I am a 24 year old female. No history of Dupuytren's in my family, no diabetes, no alcoholism, no "predisposing factors".

When I was 14 years old I suffered a laceration to my 5th digit on my right hand at the second joint. It was stitched and healed fine. However, over the next few years I developed a progressive contracture of this finger. Reaching the point where I was unable to straighten the finger and had a constant 60 degree or so angle to the 2nd joint.

I went and saw a hand specialist and informed him about the previous injury. Despite the injury he insisted that the cause was Dupuytren's disease and schedule me for a fasciotomy of my 5th finger, at the time of the surgery I was 20. After the completed fasciotomy I underwent hand therapy and now the finger is completely straight and functional, although there is obvious and noticeable scarring of the entire finger.

I was just curious if you all think this was Dupuytren or if it was more related to the traumatic event. I never noticed any nodules in my hand at any point and had a hard time believing it was Dupuytren's given the information that I had been able to find about it and who typically suffers from it.

Thanks for any input.

An awful lot of people who post on this forum have had symptoms brought on by trauma- surgery, a fall, a cut, etc. I'm trying to find out if my post-surgical problems are Dupuytren's or not, and it seems like there just aren't any answers. According to my second hand specialist, laboratory analysis of the tissue involved can't provide a diagnosis other than that of fibrosis. He tells me that Dupuytren's probably has a genetic predisposition involved and some sort of autoimmune trigger that activates it. He also says that for every identified autoimmune disease, there are several more that don't have names. Your problem may be caused by an evil cousin of Dupuytren, maybe by Dupuytren himself.

Finally, all this stuff about Dupuytren's going along with alcoholism, cirrhosis, etc., is pretty much B.S. From reading threads here about that, it's just not true. Some folks drink a little, a few, quite a bit, some are teetotallers. Some have a family history of messed up hands, many others don't. Diabetes seems to up the odds of problems, but again, there are tons of people with Dupuytren's who have perfect blood sugar.

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Edited 07/25/11 17:24