The colloquial term “mouse arm” describes the unspecific clinical picture of the RSI syndrome (Repetitive Strain Injury). Behind the term “mouse arm” are various clinical pictures, such as pain or inflammation in nerves, tendons and muscles. Due to the mouse arm, the movements in the arm and hands are very painful and only possible to a limited extent due to overloading.
Symptoms
The symptoms associated with a mouse arm can be versatile and non-specific. First, there are complaints such as loss of strength, numbness and sensations (e.g. tingling). In the course of the disease, pain also occurs during movement and at rest.
These symptoms are not limited to the fingers and elbow, but spread over the entire region of the body, i.e. to the shoulder/neck area. Furthermore, complaints such as incorrect movements or muscle cramps can occur. Only in a few cases is a medical term assigned to the complaints. The following designations can refer to a mouse arm:
- Bursitis (inflammation of the bursae) on the elbow
- Muscle pain (myalgia)
- Tennis elbow or
- Golfer’s elbow (Epicondylitis lateralis or ulnaris)
- Upper leg (ganglion cyst)
- Carpal tunnel syndrome, which constricts a nerve
- Hand-Arm-Vibration Syndrome
- Inflammation of the stylus process and
- Various tendon diseases and inflammations.
Causes
The mouse arm is a young clinical picture in which the causes and developmental processes have not yet been clarified in detail. However, it is known that the mouse arm is caused by overloading. Overloading is caused by the same, constantly repeated movements and sequences of movements that damage the stressed structures.
The term “mouse arm” is misleading because one might think that the versatile clinical picture is only caused by the use of the computer mouse. In fact, all kinds of monotonous movements, i.e. not only clicking with the mouse, are responsible for the development of the mouse arm. In many professions monotonous movements are performed daily.
Affected are, for example, office workers, programmers and PC/video players who type and click with their fingers every day. But also assembly line workers, cashiers or sign language interpreters put a lot of strain on their hand and arm muscles every day. However, not everyone is equally at risk, but differ in their physiological and psychological characteristics in the probability of suffering from a mouse arm.
These strains initially cause small injuries (micro-traumas), which cannot heal sufficiently if the breaks between strains are not long enough. Over long periods of time, this results in greater damage, which can manifest itself in various forms (see symptoms). In addition to the physio-mechanical causes, psychological factors are also involved in the development of a mouse arm.
Those affected link the pain with the associated movements (pain memory). This explains why patients are initially free of symptoms after a long recovery break, such as a vacation, but suffer from the spectrum of symptoms after only a few hours. From this it can be deduced that the cause spectrum of the mouse arm is divided into different phases: First of all, the number of micro-injuries due to acute overload increases. Furthermore, if the breaks are too short, the number of non-repaired tissue increases and a motor-programmed pain sensation, the pain memory, develops.