Jim H, you posted in another thread

"There's a Lederhose forum on Yahoo where the moderator has been posting about his recent experience with 'cryosurgical' treatment that sounds really promising. Basically the tissue and involved nerves are damaged, in a controlled way, by extreme cold so the condition is no longer painful."

It might be time to start a specific therad for this therapy. I haven't seen any statistics yet but obviously there are doctors available to provide this therapy. Maybe it turns out a valid option.

David (Yahoo moderator who recently had cryo treatment of his Ledderhose) mentioned the site www.footfreezer.com (nice name!). That's the site of the doctor who he went to. Interesting enough this doctor also treats Dupuytren. David himself is not yet sure whether his nodule is contracting (if you look at his pictures bulb might be a more adequate term than nodule). Let's see how this develops.

My concern about using cryo therapy for the hand is the destruction of nerves. While I probably wouldn't care much about losing some nerves of my foot, the hand might be different.

Wolfgang

Jim, I don't think that any of the current therapies stops the spread. Dupuytren and Ledderhose are systemic diseases and all available therapies only treat symptoms.

Classical hand/foot surgery might be a negative exception in that sense that, for some patients (not for all), it even accelerates the spread.

The radical approach of fasciectomy that removes the complete tissue is possibly the only attempt to "solve" the problem. But in my view it is not a successful attempt.

So for the time being we have to live with therapies that make fingers straight, stop the growth of individual nodules or reduce pain. Better than nothing.

Wolfgang

Here is an update on David's recent experiment with cryotherapy of Ledderhose:

"It has been about six weeks and I think I have about a 50% reduction in each foot. Now, the nodules have become hard again. They were pliable for a good while. I am not sure what this means. I feel pretty good about it, but my one worry now is that aggressive re-growth might occur like in traditional surgery. ... I am glad I did it, but obviously better results would have been preferable."

We now have approval and published details of the recent cryotherapy of Ledderhose. If you are interested you find it on www.dupuytren-online.info. Go to "Other therapies" and then scroll down to Cryotherapy. The pictures might not be appealing but the outcome is (all's well that ends well).

Wolfgang