Hand injuries are relatively common in Summit County — from house projects to construction work to winter recreation — and their treatment is highly specialized in the world of orthopedic medicine.

Panorama Summit Orthopedics has added Dr. Michele Prevost to its practice in Frisco, who has extensive subspecialty interest and experience in hand surgery.

“The complexity of the hand that allows you to have dexterity and your hands for so many things makes it a little more complex to reconstruct,” Dr. Prevost said. “I find the hand to be the most interesting.”

Panorama Summit Orthopedics is thrilled to offer this experienced care in Summit County. Dr. Prevost will be available to help with the practice’s busy winter volume — she also has experience in orthopaedic trauma — but hand injury care is her primary focus.

“We give our patients in Summit County this option so they don’t need to travel down the hill (to the Front Range) for specialty care,” she said.

Treating common hand injuries

Dr. Prevost doesn’t yet have a large enough sample of local patients to determine which injuries are most common in Summit County, but she said most hand injuries generally require urgent or immediate care.

“We commonly see people making mistakes with saws, getting their fingers in the way of saws,” she said. “That’s usually the most unfortunate thing we see from people trying to take on home projects.”

Treating tendon lacerations or fractured wrists might be put off for a few days in order to let swelling settle down, but Dr. Prevost said surgery should typically occur within a week to 10 days.

“Treatment varies a lot and is very specific to the injury. If you cut a tendon, there are specific protocols to keep the repair from failing, but also to make sure the patient gets motion back. For a wrist fracture, you might not be able to lift anything heavy for a long time, but maybe you can be using your hand or wrist within a few weeks.”

More about Dr. Prevost

Dr. Prevost attended the U.S. Air Force Academy and then military medical school at the Uniformed Services University. She did a surgery internship and then flight medicine for two years before her orthopaedic surgery residency. As a ski racer in high school, she was familiar with orthopaedic care as a patient.

“A friend of the family who took care of me and became a mentor — he loved doing orthopaedics and encouraged me that I could do it,” she recalled. “Only about 1% of orthopaedic surgeons were women at that time.”

After her residency, which she said was really strong in hand surgery training, Dr. Prevost went to her military assignments in Ohio and then Alaska, where she worked primarily as a hand subspecialist.