The smartphone: silent enemy of the wrist

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Extract from the article: Intensive smartphone use can lead to wrist pain, often ignored until it becomes troublesome. Dr Savadogo W. Jean Emmanuel, Onco-rhumatologist and osteoarticular ultrasonographer (Burkina Faso), warns of a discreet but increasingly frequent ailment: s

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Intensive smartphone use can lead to wrist pain, often ignored until it becomes troublesome. Dr Savadogo W. Jean Emmanuel, Onco-rhumatologist and osteoarticular ultrasonographer (Burkina Faso), warns of a discreet but increasingly frequent ailment: smartphone wrist syndrome. A rather long name, for a pain that sometimes follows you into the morning.

According to Dr. Savadogo Jean Emmanuel, smartphone wrist syndrome is "a set of pains and discomforts linked to the excessive use of telephones. It's mainly repetitive gestures and poor wrist posture that are to blame: sending messages with both thumbs, scrolling the screen with just one finger, holding the phone in a fixed position for long periods of time - all these strain muscles and tendons."

The signs are sometimes discreet at first, "a little pain, numbness, tingling in the hand or wrist.  But over time, these symptoms can worsen. It becomes difficult to grip an object, to make a precise movement, or even to carry on with certain everyday tasks", says the rheumatologist.

According to the specialist, some people are more at risk.  These include women, office workers, the elderly, those with a history of hand trauma or those who use their phones in addition to other manual activities. Even young people are concerned, as they often use the phone from childhood, and sometimes for several hours a day. If nothing is done in time, warns Dr Savadogo, the consequences can be serious: “an inflamed thumb that hurts when you move, a pinched nerve in the wrist that causes tingling or numbness in the hand, or a loss of strength that prevents you from holding objects properly”, he points out.

The telephone is a useful tool, but wrists need attention too. It's better to prevent pain than to have to put the phone away for several weeks.

Jean ELI