Blackberry is not a medical device, at least not yet. The reason we mention Blackberry is because blackberryitis is here:
Users of the BlackBerry, dubbed “crackberries” because they are so addictive, commonly send 500 texts a day, with their thumbs often doing most of the work.
Sean Hughes, the professor of orthopaedic surgery at Imperial College London, said that such frantic use of the thumb would inevitably cause problems.
“The thumb works differently from the other fingers. It’s designed for picking up things. There’s a joint at the bottom of the thumb that allows it to flex and rotate, so when people are bashing away at their mobiles the thumb is moving in different dimensions,” he said.
“But all this movement can cause problems compared with the fingers, which only have to move up and down.”
Prof Hughes said that the reality of “BlackBerry thumb” was probably rather more prosaic than sufferers realised. “They could be coming down with what is effectively early osteoarthritis,” he said.