To the Editor: “Texting” tendinitis (resulting from excessive sending of text messages via mobile phone) has not been reported in Australia, although a recent article in the Adelaide Advertiser reported a case in Italy. 1

A 13-year-old girl presented to me in mid-January with an acutely tender swelling in the mid-radial aspect of her right forearm. It had been present for about 2 days. There was no history of trauma, or recalled change of activity. Further enquiry revealed that she had been given a mobile phone in December and that the associated plan allowed $100 credit that had to be used between 5 January and 4 February. This equates to nearly 300 SMS messages, or 10 a day, if all available credit were used for sending text messages (although, in this case, some of the credit had been used in making calls). The phone and plan also allowed up to 760 characters per message, instead of the usual 160. The patient had been using only her right thumb to press the keypad, and was using “traditional” rather than “predictive” text input (ie, creating the message one letter at a time, rather than using the mobile’s interpretative software to reduce the number of keystrokes).

Examination of the patient’s forearm revealed a firm, tender swelling in the dorsi-radial aspect of the mid-forearm (presumably involving the abductor or extensor pollicis longus muscle). There was pain with resisted thumb and wrist dorsiflexion.

A presumptive diagnosis of “texting” tendinitis was made. The condition settled rapidly with explanation and reassurance, rest, application of naproxen gel twice daily for 2 days, and use of both hands to operate the keypad.

To my knowledge, this is the first report of this condition in Australia, although other unusual overuse injuries of the hand have been described with Nintendo playing. 2 Perhaps the manufacturers of mobile phones should include health warnings of the risk of overuse injury as part of product labelling.