Wrist Tendonitis What is wrist tendonitis? Wrist tendonitis, also known as wrist tenosynovitis, is a common problem involving irritation and inflammation of the tendons surrounding the wrist joint. People who engage in repetitive actions with their hands and arms are most prone to tenosynovitis of the wrist. Common causes include: frequent typing at a computer, playing racquet sports, and new mothers holding their babies. Wrist tendonitis typically affects several tendons on the back or front of the wrist, depending on the activity. The issue occurs in the places where your tendons cross over one another or travel over bone. Your tendons glide smoothly through special casings that allow them to move with little friction, as your wrists angle back and forth. When your tendons are injured due to overuse, these casings don’t allow the tendon to glide during movement, in turn causing pain. What are the symptoms of wrist tendonitis? If you have tendonitis in your wrist, you’ll have wrist pain—on any or all sides of your wrist. Other possible symptoms include swelling around your wrist, stiffness, decreased flexibility, warmth and redness, a grinding sensation when you move your wrist around, pain where the arm meets the hand, which can radiate up into your elbow, and general tenderness of your wrist or forearm muscles. You might also feel pain when putting pressure on your hand, like pushing yourself up from a sitting position. It’s also possible to only experience pain when your wrist is straining. But if left untreated, this type of pain can become more persistent. How do we treat wrist tendonitis? Physical therapy is highly effective for wrist tendonitis. We work with you to create a treatment plan specific to your condition and your goals. Your treatment program includes identifying and avoiding painful movements, correcting poor posture to reduce stress on the wrist, and figure out why the wrist is overworking for larger muscles in the body that may be weak. We use Active Release Technique to push out inflammation, stretches to reduce stiffness in your wrist, hand, and forearm, and strengthening exercises in your shoulder and core. As your personal tenosynovitis wrist treatment progresses, and you heal, we will also show you ways of preventing further injury, performing warm up exercises before playing a sport and movements like crawling and rocking to strengthen the wrist during everyday movements.