Hello,

Last year, I had surgery on my right pinkie that was 65% contracted. The doctor told me afterward that he also had to remove the capsule surrounding the PIP joint because my finger wouldn't straighten out. He said that the capsule was damaged enough to have it removed. As a result, my surgery lasted 3 hours.

I am still recovering from that surgery. My pinkie is 20% contracted, although most of the curvature is from scar tissue (according to my dr.) and I am continuing with my exercises, massaging, and a pressure brace.

He also told me that NA wouldn't have fixed the capsule problem and that my finger still would have been contracted after the surgery. Be careful of the advice you get from this site. Most of the folks here are pro-NA and anti-surgery which doesn't help those of us who elect the surgery.

I recommend that you talk to your dr about surgery.

My pinkie was at 90 degrees. I opted for NA with Dr. Eaton. The finger is now at about 15-20 degrees. Yes, its not perfectly straight, but I am happy with the results because of the quick recovery, and because NA was not invasive... From what "nriedell" writes above, his finger went from 65 to 20 degrees with surgery. I am not against surgery, people should read all the pros and cons both for surgery and NA and then choose what they want, but my thinking is ...."why not try NA first, ...you can always have surgery in the end after you have tried NA".

I believe the main thing is being on top of things and treat Dupuytrens at the early stages, before the fingers contract too much, especially the PIP joint, its very stubborn and hard to totally correct.

I'm not sure what capsular contraction really is...tried to get information on google, but didn't come up with much, specially in relation to Dupuytrens surgery or NA...everything in google regarding capsular contration came up in relation to breast augmentation or such....

If anyone has more information on it, I would love to read it.

Edited 04/27/10 01:38