Beware the 'Blackberry Thumb'

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter
Monday, June 16, 2008; 3:00 AM

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SUNDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- It's rare these days to see a teenager without a cell phone in hand, texting for hours at a time, seemingly without health consequences. But, when older folks attempts to spend the day e-mailing, instant messaging and surfing the Web on a handheld device, repetitive stress injuries -- such as "Blackberry thumb" -- are much more likely to occur.

Dubbed "Blackberry thumb" because of the popularity of that particular model of wireless personal digital assistant (PDA), this repetitive stress injury occurs because these devices rely almost solely on the use of your thumbs for typing, instead of all your fingers.

Any device that relies on the thumbs for typing can cause this type of injury because the thumbs simply weren't designed for such use.

"Blackberries and other PDAs can cause tendonitis from working in such a small space with the thumbs," explained Kristen Crowe, a certified hand therapist with Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. "The problem is that people are doing the same activity for long periods of time that the body just wasn't meant to do. Teens seem to do OK with it. It's around age 40 or 50 the 'itises', [such as tendonitis], start to crop up."

Margot Miller, president of the American Physical Therapy Association's Occupational Health Special Interest Group, added: "Because the keyboard of the PDA is so small, and because the thumb, which is the least dexterous part of the hand, is overtaxed, the risk of injury just skyrockets."

"The use of PDAs is no longer limited to the eight hours spent in the workplace," Miller said. "More and more, people are depending on these devices to stay in touch with friends and family before and after the workday and on the weekends, as well as having access to work when they leave the office. That is where the heart of the problem lies." .

Symptoms of "Blackberry thumb" include pain and numbness in the thumbs and joints of the hand.

Most people who rely on PDAs wouldn't readily give them up, even for an injury, so it's fortunate that there are treatments available.