Nintendo thumb
injury caused by video games
Nintendo thumb, also known as gamer's thumb and similar names, is a form of repetitive strain injury (RSI) caused by excessive playing of video games with the traditional Nintendo controller. This injury mainly occurs due to repeated thumb movements while playing video games. The symptoms can include blistering, paraesthesia (a tingling or a burning feeling in the skin), as well as swelling of the thumbs, though any finger can be affected. This can lead to stress on tendons, nerves, and ligaments in the hands, and further onto lateral epicondylitis ("tennis elbow"), tendinitis (severe swelling of the tendon), bursitis (inflammation of the fluid-filled sac around joints), and carpal tunnel syndrome (compression of the median nerve at the wrist). Similar injuries can occur with other gaming systems, such as PlayStation thumb from playing Sony PlayStation. The general recommendation for the treatment is to rest and stop the repetitive motion of the affected finger (usually the thumb). In more severe and painful cases, using NSAIDs is also recommended.
Other less localized injuries in the shoulder, knee, and Achilles tendon have also been noted to arise from playing the Nintendo Wii. Some of the symptoms can be associated with the De Quervain syndrome (degeneration of tendons that control the movement of the thumb).
Background
Few case reports of symptoms including stiff and painful joints and limited range of motion in the wrist after frequent Atari 2600 use were published in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“Nintendo thumb” enters the record as injury caused by video games. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nintendo, thumb and injury can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nintendo thumb” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.