mallet finger

A damaged tendon can cause significant loss of function in fine motor control, such as with a mallet finger.

Injuries to tendons, such as mallet finger.

Symptoms of mallet finger include a:

Mallet finger (also called baseball finger or drop finger) is a bent fingertip that cannot be straightened.

Patients that present with mallet finger will have pain at the DIP joint, and will be unable to extend the joint.

Surgical treatment is used when the mallet finger presents as an open injury or if the bony mallet involves more than 30% of the articular surface of the joint.

In medicine, mallet finger, also baseball finger, dropped finger, dolphin finger and (more generally) extensor tendon injury, is an injury of the extensor digitorum tendon of the fingers at the distal interphalangeal joint (DIP).

In all cases, there is a stretching of the volar plate at the PIP joint to allow hyperextension, plus some damage to the attachment of the extensor tendon to the base of the distal phalanx that produces a hyperflexed mallet finger.