Time on the shoreline is the perfect day for Joe White. The avid fisherman uses the chance to cast his line as a way to relax and recharge. But there was a time when the solitude of fishing began to be overshadowed by pain in his wrist stemming from an old motorcycle accident.

During the accident, Joe suffered torn ligaments in his left wrist. The resulting pain led him to try occupational therapy and steroid injections. When neither provided enough relief, he sought surgical treatment.

Joe’s first surgery left him with burning and tingling in his fingertips and a diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome. A second, more complex, surgery helped get rid of the burning sensation but didn’t do much to repair Joe’s joint from the damage caused by arthritis that had developed over the years. With the pain in his wrist only getting worse, Joe was barely able to fling his fishing rod.

“I still had pain; I had very limited mobility because everything I did hurt,” Joe says. “I basically had one hand. The pain I lived with 24 hours a day.”

Hoping the third time would be a charm, the then 66-year-old reached out to orthopedic hand surgeon Timothy Niacaris, M.D., at Texas Health Hand & Upper Extremity Specialists, a Texas Health Physicians Group practice in Arlington.

“He had failed prior surgeries, including metal implants that had been dislodged and nearly all the cartilage in his wrist was gone,” Niacaris explains. “This left Joe with very few options other than wrist fusion to help alleviate his pain.”

A wrist fusion involves joining the bones in the wrist together. It allows the bones to form and grow into one solid structure, which can help eliminate the painful rubbing of bone on bone.

The catch? Joe didn’t buy in to having the fusion procedure because he feared he might lose all mobility in his wrist. So the doctor and patient had to get creative, ultimately deciding on a more unconventional solution that Joe understood might not guarantee the desired outcome.

“Rather than fusing his wrist with metal plates that would have limited his mobility, we instead resurfaced his bony surfaces with skin grafts that allowed him to have new fibrous tissue that maintained joint mobility but eliminated the surfaces that were causing his pain,” Niacaris says.

An Innovative, Restorative Solution

The ability of the human body to heal and repair itself is rather a miracle. For Joe, it was life-changing.

Since he no longer had cartilage in his wrist to act as a structure for regeneration, Niacaris had to build a new joint using skin cells from a special graft to provide reinforcement. This specialized tissue served as a cushion between the bony surfaces of Joe’s wrist, wrapping the bones to eliminate bone from rubbing on bone.

As a result, the surgery went better than anyone expected.

“It’s been two and a half years since I had this procedure and today I’m pain free,” Joe admits. “I have the mobility; I’m able to go fishing. I go hunting a few times a year. I can do odds-and-ends around the home. Life is much better today.”

Experiencing a hand or wrist issue? Find a specialist who can assist with your joint pain and mobility.