My husband has been diagnosed with Kienbock’s disease after have a sore wrist for a while. He thought he had sprained it but after it didn’t get better, he went to the doctor. How common is the disease and how could we have known earlier that it wasn’t a sprain?

The cause of Kienbock’s disease isn’t yet known; it isn’t a very common disease. The disease causes a lack of blood circulation to the lunate bone, a small bone that goes from your wrist to your hand. Because the blood can’t feed the bone the nutrients it needs, the bone tissue begins to die.

The symptoms of Kienbock’s disease are very similar to spraining your wrist, so it is easy to believe that you’ve merely hurt your hand. Symptoms can be:

pain and swelling

wrist stiffness

tenderness on the top of the hand

pain on turning the hand, palm up

reduced strength to the hand

Surgery may be tried to re-establish blood flow to the bone or to fuse bones together.