Conditions + Treatments
Hand Injury/Condition
I am a musician and calligrapher, so I use my hands in my work quite a bit. Fortunately, I went decades without any hand conditions or injuries that hindered my work. However, in 2017 I had a terrible, constant pain in my right hand which lead to an open surgery on my right thumb and 4th finger. The surgery, performed by a local, respected hand surgeon, went well, but I had a long recovery that required months of physical therapy.
One year later, my right hand started to trigger, and it once again became very painful. Because of the long recovery experience I had with open surgery, I started exploring alternative procedures that might help the pain.
After days of researching my options, I discovered a procedure offered by Dr. Ricardo Colberg at Andrews Sports Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama. Shortly after I found this procedure, I began to correspond with the Andrews staff via email.
Dr. Colberg talked with me about the procedure called percutaneous trigger finger release under ultrasound guidance. I read all the professional medical papers available via various websites and concluded that this procedure would be the best option for me.
In April 2019, my wife and I flew to Birmingham and Dr. Colberg performed the procedure on my hand. The procedure was exactly as Dr. Colberg described it. By the time I flew back to Santa Barbara the day after the procedure, my hand felt surprisingly “normal.” I was very excited for this outcome because of the previous process I had to go through with open surgery. Within a week, I was back to all normal activities, including drumming, piano and writing Japanese calligraphy without any problems.
I have to admit, I had occasional skepticism about the procedure because it just seemed too easy, but Dr. Colberg and his staff assured me before and after that the procedure would be successful. I returned to Andrews Sports Medicine in June 2019 for my follow-up visit and at that time I asked Dr. Colberg if he knew of a procedure similar to the one he had performed on me for carpal tunnel. Dr. Colberg put me in contact with a major player of the Sonex procedure in Napa, California.
I recently had the Sonex procedure performed on my right hand in Napa. This procedure was equally painless, and the pain, tingling, and numbness are gone. I have full strength in my hand thanks to Dr. Colberg and his attention to detail with my procedure and follow-up. This procedure that Dr. Colberg offers is one of the best kept secrets for correcting trigger finger issues. My experience with him and his staff were among the best I’ve experienced. I’m so thankful that I found Dr. Colberg and the Andrews Sports Medicine team.
Paul Krieger
Retired Professor of Japanese
Amateur musician
