mallet finger... Say What!!!

So a week ago i thought i broke my finger but when i went to the ER they said that i completely tore the tendon (extensor) from my bone. aka-mallet finger, middle left finger. the hand spec. said that it will take 12 weeks in a splint and 4 months before i can even touch the rock again (agh!)...so what i'm getting at is i want know if anyone has had this and how long it actually took them to recover.
thanks,
ang

I did that to my pinky finger and it did take a long time before it was usable, but not 4 months. Of course, you injured a more primary finger. Mine healed a bit funny too, I know have a "hump" of sorts in the last joint in my pinky. It works fine, but i tend to need to tape it now or it gets abraded in cracks and such.

Edit: I was in the splint for about 8 weeks - it was very annoying.

Come show it off at happy hour tonight. I've never seen a middle left finger before or a mallet finger. Also, beer can be an excellent pain reliever.

A friend of mine (non-climber) had mallet finger a few years ago. He had about 2 months in the splint. He also claimed that the heavy doses of acupuncture/herbs helped out quite a bit.

Good luck.

yeah, it looks like its almost 8 weeks in this splint... :( i have found that whiskey is helping significantly

Angela. wrote:yeah, it looks like its almost 8 weeks in this splint... :( i have found that whiskey is helping significantly

Not much that some Old #7 won't take care of!!!

Angela, I had mallet finger this past fall on my pinky as well. I was in a splint for 6 weeks, then another two at night. I was able to do some of the things that I liked, Ice climbing, soccer, yoga etc, just had to wear the annoying splint while doing them. I would bet that you could still find things that you could climb (juggy) not crimping, or hand jams would be good to. It is amazing that the tendon grows back like it does.

so how did you injure it? It's a common basketball injury, but I did mine playing soccer.

see i was pulling really hard on this bad ass ring lock up in Lumpy on Anaconda and it snapped, well ripped off the bone... i wish, no i did it catching a stupid football :( but that story kinda sucks

I like the Anaconda story...stick with it!

I had the same injury last fall on my left ring finger (basketball). Don't want to get you down but I was splinted 10 weeks and after the splint came off it was another 2-3 before that finger felt normalish enough to climb on. I think the injury was in mid October and I was climbing hard again by the end of January. Do NOT take the splint off unless you have your hand flat on a table or are holding it in full extension with your thumb. It will set you back if your finger bends again....

Hey all, thought I'd try reviving this thread as I am now experiencing the joy of avulsion fracture of the right ring finger at the DIP joint, courtesy of a pretty minor mountain bike crash. I think it is a partial tear as I could lift it a little to offset the droop prior to splinting yesterday. Getting checked for healing progress in a month.

Trying to figure out how much activity I can keep up in the meantime. I'd like to try to climb juggy stuff to keep moving but am afraid that even that would make my splinted ring finger try to bend in the splint as it tries to join in on the grasping motion. Thinking about focusing on skiing and easy biking while I wait this out. Thoughts?

PM'd you matt

Plan on the splint time PLUS physical therapy.

Did mine playing rugby and went the splint came off.... I could barely bend it. It healed just fine, has a little droop now.

You can also sometimes have a pin inserted so you don't have to wear a splint.

Thanks for the feedback (particularly for your detailed experience Chad!)

For posterity, attached is a pic of x-ray of the injury in question. The doc drew on a couple lines illustrating the attachment point and the arrow but you can more or less see the break. There was an interesting pattern of bruising on the top of the joint the day of and I am attaching a pic of that as well. Hoping it means that the damage was limited to one side although who knows. Hard to tell in the x-ray but I'm hoping that explains why I still was able to lift it a bit.

Matt Westlake wrote:...For posterity, attached is a pic of x-ray of the injury in question...

Strangely enough, that's good news. It's better to pull off some of the bone (avulsion fracture) than just tear the tendon. Bone heals with new bone, as strong as the original bone, but tendon heals with scar tissue and that relatively disorganized collagen is never as strong as the original. Healing time will be same as any fracture, so exercise patience/swear at it as needed, but be optimistic. Yes, 4 mo before it can handle full load. Sorry, bone like any similar material handles compression much better than tension, and you're asking it to handle tension, so give it its full healing time. The good news is that it will likely return to full strength as long as you don't do anything foolish to it before it can.

Well, that is good info, although figuring out what to do with myself so I don't just get fat over the next few months will be the challenge. I guess it's time to revisit a few neglected hobbies, although maybe I can manage to slab climb without loading that finger. The local weather has sucked for climbing lately so I haven't been missing much more than gym time at this point. I'm sure I'll go stir crazy before long.

I've never been that fond of hiking but maybe I'll do a bit more of that just to get moving - it's always felt like a long approach with no payoff at the end :/

FYI, I did this last year, in a dirt bike accident.

I think I was in the splint for like 6-8 weeks. I did some very careful EASY bouldering probably about halfway through that, but you gotta be really careful. I mostly did a lot of hiking, running, etc.

I was back on the (plastic) rock as soon as the splint came off, but it took a while to return to full strength on that finger, of course. I didn't do any formal physical therapy, doctor didn't think it was necessary. I bet it was a couple months until it was fully functional.

I got weird occasional discomfort for a while, but after a year it's basically unnoticeable.

The worst part was having a finger in a splint 24/7, even simple tasks get just a little bit more difficult.

Good luck. It shouldn't cause you any long term trouble, in the grand scheme of injuries not too bad!

For those following along, here's an update of my situation:

I'm mostly healed and have stopped wearing the splint but have still got a bit of inflammation and a rather pronounced droop that seems likely to be permanent. I'm back to climbing but am not back at the top of my game yet. Hard crimping is still a bit off and can be painful (more than normal). I'd say I'm about 2 boulder grades off normal but I am trying to be a bit careful. Like most injured parts it seems to fare better and is less swollen after warming up.

I wore the splint about as long as I could stand it (6 weeks or so) but it didn't seem to be helping much once the healing seemed to have reached a plateau. I eased back into climbing on TR with the splint on around a month in just to get a bit of movement but tried to avoid cranking in such a way as to stress it. I still might have stressed it a little by unconsciously trying to flex it within the splint though I tried to avoid that. The tape and splint were beginning to irritate the skin on the back of my finger (I probably should have invested in the more open splint Chad recommended) so it was hard to tell if it was not healing well or if being under tape so much was causing trouble. Once I stopped wearing the splint my skin felt sensitive and soft, and not in a good way, but getting rid of the tape was an improvement.

Unfortunately something that wasn't made super clear to me by my doc was that the tendon has a tendency (ha) to stretch while healing and if flexed which can lead to more droop. I figured the finger needed to be in the upright position to make sure things were close together to re-join but keeping them near means the tendon *might* be less stretched out. I wonder if I had taped it with a little upward tilt if that would have been better or lead to a worse problem with it being hyperflexed the other way... anyway, it's not a huge deal. All told I'm not too disappointed in the outcome and think I still have progress to be made. I just have a slightly goofy looking droopy finger.

I think my doc said something similar about the timeline with regard to pain and recovery although I could kind of tell he was perhaps trying to paint a rosier picture to keep me upbeat and compliant with treatment. When I got my splint (a thermoform plastic custom fit made on site) the lady who did so also does PT and she seemed a bit more pessimistic about use and figured on a longer recovery. It might have been down to a bit of misunderstanding on the part of to doc as to the kind of use a rock climber puts their digits to. At follow-ups where they re-X-rayed it to check on the bone reattaching I tried to explain better (crimping tiny edges and saying I'd be pulling my full weight up on that) I got a bit more of a vague "oh that might take a bit longer" or "work your way back up/ease into it" responses. I figured it was enough to get the standard healing process underway and then rebuild it through training and use. When I started back to climbing it was a bit painful but that seems to be diminishing through use so don't take that initial pain as an indicator that anything is necessarily extra wrong - but I'm no doctor, see what yours has to say. I think there is some breaking up of the scar tissue that needs to happen as you regain your range of motion. I did get some positive news though in that the repair of the bone should be as strong as before whereas tendons may have more issues. My injury seemed to be more or less just the bone and perhaps some impact trauma to the tendon. We'll see, I'm still recovering.

Jumping onto this thread several years later bc I just got an mri revealing an Avulsion fracture/mallet finger. Back in December 2024, I heard a pop when I was (gratuitously) power crimping. I had a fat finger for a few days and avoided routes with crimps afterwards. I assumed it was just a sprain so I waited around for 6 weeks hoping it would go away. (It didn't. Lol.) So, now I'm supposed to see a hand surgeon next week.

I was wondering if yall feel like you're back at your normal grip strength having gone through the splint/PT saga? Also, were any of you recommended surgery?

I spent months with a splint / doing PT (and not climbing) after getting mallet finger.  I did not have surgery and it wasn’t recommended, but I went to an ortho immediately after the injury and got it splinted.  My extensor never fully healed and I have a minor permanent droop (possibly because my finger wasn’t kept completely straight for 100% of the time it was supposed to be splinted).  That said, once healed it doesn’t affect finger strength thankfully because the issue is with the extensor instead of the flexor.

Good luck with recovery!