Thumbs Up
By Mark Loehrke
Appears in the May 2026 issue.
Local surgeon lends a hand in a revolutionary new procedure
A couple of years ago, Colleen Byrne started having trouble doing one of her favorite things—penning fun, loving comments in birthday cards to friends and family members. Just shy of her own 50th birthday, the Naperville resident, substitute teacher, and group fitness instructor also found herself struggling to do pushups or teach her yoga class. The culprit? Intense and worsening pain in her thumbs.
“The pain made me miserable and sad,” Byrne recalls. “It throbbed or sent bolts of fire shooting through my thumb when I tried to do something as simple as holding my hair dryer.”
On the recommendation of a physician friend, in early 2025 she went to see orthopedic surgeon Jon Tueting, a shoulder, elbow, and hand surgery specialist at Rush Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine in Aurora, to get her thumbs checked out. In addition to giving her a brace and a cortisone shot for the pain, Tueting also ordered the X-rays that revealed the root of the problem—Byrne had no cartilage in her right thumb.
The traditional treatment for thumb arthritis like this—a condition that affects 1.5 million people in the United States and 20 million globally every year—would involve taking out the trapezium bone and using a tendon to steady the joint. This method has worked well enough over the years, but it never really provides optimal range of motion or long-term stability for many patients.
Fortunately for Byrne, Tueting for several years had been consulting with a European company and a group of specialists working on a joint replacement option for the thumb. The procedure, called a carpometacarpal total joint arthroplasty, involves placing a modular three-part metal and plastic device in the basal joint, effectively replacing the trapezium bone with a steel trapezial cup or tiny socket. Since the joint is replaced with a stable ball and socket joint, the native anatomy is preserved, thumb pain is eliminated, and functional strength is restored.
“The cool thing about this procedure, which is essentially like a tiny total hip replacement for the thumb, is that it restores something close to the normal alignment of the thumb with a new bearing surface,” Tueting explains. “As a result, patients end up with better strength, range of motion, and function than what we’ve done previously, and they just have better overall outcomes.”
While this procedure has become the go-to treatment for thumb arthritis across the pond, FDA approval had slowed things down in the United States. But once that green light finally came in 2025, Tueting was the first physician to perform the surgery in this country. He has since done about 50 of them, including Byrne’s last September, and believes that this will soon become the way to treat thumb arthritis.
In Byrne’s case, by early October, when she went back to have the stitches removed, she already could open and close her hand with minimal pain and touch all of her fingers with the thumb across her palm. And with nothing but rave reviews for Tueting’s work, she already was looking forward to having the same surgery on her other thumb in the near future. “Hope and happiness are the two words that come to mind when I think of what this procedure has brought back to my life,” Byrne reflects. “I can again do all the things I’ve always been able to do—open a screw top, do pushups, write letters, or draw. Maybe I’ll even start knitting or sewing after the next one.”
Photos: Rush (Byrne and Tueting); Medartis Inc.
