Host: Sometimes you go to a doctor to examine your hands and he examining the neck, but you came in because your hand is bothering you and he says there is something in the neck interfering with the connection of the nerves to the hand. And he says thoracic, oblique, problem what is it all about?
Guest: See the nerve is a very different cell than the rest of the cells in the body. It’s one long cell that arises in the neck and then ends up at the tips of the fingers. It’s one cell. The body of the cell is in the neck and the end of the cell in the fingertip. So, you could get numbness in the fingertip if the nerve is damaged in the finger, in the wrist, in the forearm, in the elbow, in the shoulder, in the thoracic outlet which is around the ribs, or in the neck. So when you have numbness in the fingers, you go up to rule out, always, if there is another place where the nerve could be under pressure.
Host: And so how do you handle something upstairs that is affecting it downstairs?
Guest: Upstairs and downstairs can be located through a test called nerve conduction study and electromyography.
Host: So if there is something up here causing down here, you sometimes would send them to a neurosurgeon because you would only want to work on the hand, is that correct?
Guest: Absolutely true. The neurosurgeons work on the neck and we work on the hands.
Host: So in other words, what affects you in the hand, because the story can start quite upstairs, is that true?
Guest: Absolutely true.
Host: Alright, thank you very much.
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