Introduction
Introduction
Hand Surgery and Rehabilitation is a research group that is part of two departments: the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and Physical Therapy and the Department of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery. These departments have a strong track record in hand surgery and rehabilitation, both in research and clinical care.
From 2006 onwards, research related to hand surgery and rehabilitation of both departments has been fully integrated to create a large and strong research team with knowledge in both hand surgery and hand therapy. The research group consists of hand surgeons, rehabilitation physicians, hand therapists, human movement scientists and engineers.
Focus
Our research focuses on a wide range of aspects relevant to hand function and the treatment of patients with hand disorders. In a broad overview, we focus on:
1) Developing and evaluating new interventions for patients with hand disorders
2) Developing and evaluating assessment tools for hand functions, such as the assessment of hand strength, mobility and cold intolerance
3) Improving our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of diseases and interventions. For example, we use fMRI to study the effect of mirror therapy, use video-thermography to study cooling and rewarming of the hand in patients with cold intolerance and develop ultrasound techniques to study tendon and muscle dynamics in vivo
Patients
Our research mainly focuses on the following patient groups:
- Hand trauma
- Congenital hand deformities
- Pain disorders
- Chronic disorders, specifically CMC1 osteoartrosis, Dupuytren's disease and pain disorders
- Stroke
We collaborate with a number of other departments within the Erasmus MC, but also with a number of other excellent national and international research groups. We presently have more than 10 PhD students working on in this research group and between 2007 and 2009, we obtained over 1.1 milion euros in research funding.