Hello, I was just wondering how effective the alternative Dupuytren treatment is on someone whose ring finger is completely bent down towards the palm and will not straighten out. Is this treatment effective on a severe case as this? Or is it more beneficial to someone just starting to notice the nodules on the palm of their hand before losing use of their hand with deformity of their finger?
Please advise. I would appreciate any other information that you may have on this disease. I am trying to research this for my significant other who is having more and more discomfort with his hand.
Thanks so much!
Greetings,
Your concern and questions about effectiveness of Dupuytren treatment are common.
DCI is not capable of conducting the kind of research necessary to answer your question in the way I would like to giving you specific numbers for a controlled double-blind study. For this reason, allow me to give you the benefit of my experience since 2002 while dealing with people from around the world who have finger contractures. My experience is that for every 10-12 emails and phone conversations I receive reporting partial or complete success with the DCI method of Dupuytren treatment, I receive one report of failure. Ten to 12 successes compared to one failure is pretty good. It is human nature to complain and be negative far more than it is to compliment and be positive. Because of this I take this 10 to 12:1 ratio to indicate significantly positive DCI treatment results. I wish we had the ability to conduct multimillion dollar research, like the government or a drug company, so I could give you the statistics you are looking for. For the time being is the best information I can offer.
Duration and severity of Dupuytren contracture do not seem to be significant predictive factors that I can determine based on past results; sometimes severe cases do better than mild cases; sometimes chronic (old) problems respond as good as or better than acute (recent) problems. The greatest predictor of success or failure of alternative care has consistently proven to be aggressiveness of Dupuytren treatment and the person’s ability to closely monitor and define changes in size, shape, density, surface features, and degree of movement of nodules and cords.
There are well over 500 pages of information about Alt Med treatment of Dupuytren’s contracture on the DCI website. If you spend a little time reading and evaluating the DCI site you will have all the information you will need. If you have a specific question about Dupuytren treatment you would like answered please send it to me and I will do my best to provide an answer.
You will note that there is no change in the Dupuytren treatment approach if the fingers are completely bent down or not, and there is no change in the treatment if the ring finger is involved as compared to the little or middle fingers.
In other words, the DCI approach starts out the same if the fingers are mildly or severely bent; if one, two or three fingers are involved; if one hand or both are involved; if slight nodule or severe cord formation is involved; even if the person has had prior Dupuytren’s contracture surgery or not – the DCI approach starts the same for everyone. This is so because the Dupuytren treatment is not directed specifically to the hand, but to the person. This means that the DCI concept of care is intended to not treat the disease, but to treat the person who has the disease so the immune response is supported and strengthened. By enabling the immune response of the person who has the problem to do a better job, it is our theory that each person will heal to the best of his or her ability to remove the offending fibrous nodules and cords, or at least slow down the progression of this problem.
