Painful nail bed

Information on Nail Beds

All different types of injuries that affect the nails usually cause damage to all the other structures which surround the nail. Those injuries may include fractures of the bone medically referred to as the distal phalanx. Nail beds may get cut, fingertips can also get cut as well as the fingertip tendons and nerve endings.

Nail bed injuries usually involve different types of crushing, pinching or cutting injuries and one of the most common ones is the one where the fingertip gets caught in a door. All crushing injuries of the fingertip just like the one mentioned above usually involve very painful sensations and the blood also gets collected under the affected nail which is medically referred to as hematoma.

Severe types of injuries may cause the nail to crack into pieces or they may tear away pieces of the nail. Severe fingertip injuries may also affect certain adjacent structures.

Diagnosis and Treatment

In order to diagnose, the condition the doctor needs to be provided with an accurate history of the cause of the actual injury and most cases of finger injuries require an X-ray scan because the injury may be associated with minor fractures.

Those minor fractures require a separate treatment which does not address the fingertip injury. Certain cases may require the use of adequate type of anesthesia so that the nail can be examined with magnification.

Most of these cases involve the use of local anesthesia. A person may suffer from numerous other medical conditions that may be affecting the treatment and the process of healing so they need to be discussed with the doctor as well. The treatment should provide the restoration of the nail and the structures that surround it.

If there is a hematoma under the nail it needs to be drained through a small hole in the nail which also provides relief from pain and pressure. The reparation of a nail bed commonly involves restoration of fracture alignments which are present in the fingertip.

In some cases the bone fragments have to be splinted so that the fracture can be healed in a proper manner, and the same can be said for injured tendons. If there are areas of nail bed that are missing they can be grafted from other digits. Missing skin can be left to heal on its own but in some cases it can also be covered with portions of skin grafted from the other parts of the body. Severe cases may involve deformity and scarring, but surgical reconstruction may be helpful in such cases.