‘King Charles Sausage Fingers’ Is Trending, Here’s What May Cause Dactylitis, Edema

The phrase “King Charles sausage fingers” has been trending on social media. It’s not because of some kind of new meat-filled baked puff pastry dish in honor of Saturday’s official coronation of Charles III as the new King of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. Instead, folks have been referring to the rather puffy, rounded appearance of the 74-year-old monarch’s fingers. And, yes, many people may not have previously “sausage” an appearance. So what could potentially, possibly be going on medically?

Well, it’s not as if King Charles’s fingers took a turn for the “wurst”—so to speak—recently. Back in 2012, the man formerly known as Prince—Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, that is—had already joked about his “sausage fingers,” according to Ariane Sohrabi-Shiraz writing for the Mirror. Sohrabi-Shiraz also mentioned someone’s tweet around that time that said, “I’ve never noticed the hands of Prince Charles until this photo. Is he okay? They are so swollen.” Now that Charles is in charge, there’s been even more attention to his, er, body parts. For example, as Jaymelouise Hudspith indicated for the Daily Star, Riot Labs has even come out with sausage-shaped e-cigarettes modeled after the monarch’s fingers as part of their 10-piece coronation collection:

You could say, “Get them while they are hot dogs.”

As you can imagine, “sausage fingers” is not an official medical term. Medical doctors don’t typically use the word “sausage” when examining you. That’s unless you happen to be holding an actual piece of bratwurst at the time and the doctor asks, “Could you please put down that sausage while I am trying to exam you” or perhaps says, “Nice sausage.”

Rather, doctors usually use more official medical terms such as dactylitis when describing a condition in which fingers are inflamed to the point that they do appear sausage-like. Dactylitis may be all Greek to you. It’s a combo of the Greek root “daktylos,” which means “finger”, and the the Greek root “itis”, which means inflammation. Therefore, dactylitis is literally some type of inflammation of the fingers.

Thus, when you develop so-called “sausage fingers,” it’s usually not because there is actual sausage in your fingers, which would be a medical emergency. Rather, “sausage fingers” can result when there’s swelling and potentially some fluid accumulation in your fingers. And, yes, there can be a link between a sausage finger appearance and inflammation in the finger.

Now, dactylitis can affect any number of fingers. For example, you can give the middle finger to dactylitis. Or the ring finger. Or the thumb. Or all of them. It can also affect different parts of a finger all the way up to the entire finger.

Even though dactylitis in itself may not always be a medical emergency, it should merit very prompt medical attention in all cases. Inflammation tends to be a sign that something’s gone wrong in a body part. After all, you don’t often hear people say, “The good news is that one of my body parts got inflamed,” assuming that they are using the word inflamed correctly.

So what can get inflamed in your fingers? Well, there are the numerous joints in your fingers. And there’s a medical term for joint inflammation, too: arthritis. Arthritis has that familiar Greek root “itis” preceded by the Greek root for joint, namely “arthro.” Arthritis of the finger joints has many different possible causes, ranging from osteoarthritis to psoriatic arthritis to rheumatoid arthritis to gout.

A number of these possibilities are autoimmune conditions. That’s when your immune system gets kind of confused and begins attacking your own body parts. Some autoimmune reactions can attack the joints. Others, such as those seen in Sickle cell disease, and sarcoidosis can attack other parts of the bones or the soft tissue in your fingers.

Dactylitis can result from an infection too. Possibilities include Lyme Disease, tuberculosis, syphilis, and blistering distal dactylitis. But before you go off and claim that the King has syphilis, keep in mind that infections are a much rarer cause of dactylitis.

Treatment of dactylitis does depend on what’s causing it. For example, if the culprit is some type of an infection, the treatment is typically some type of antibiotic. For many infections, treatment can cure the sausage situation. However, treatment may be a bit more challenging for different types of arthritis and autoimmune diseases. In such cases, you may not be able to fully eliminate the dactylitis but instead can only use different modalities such as cortisone shots, physical therapy, anti-inflammatory medications, ice, and cold water soaks to manage and reduce the symptoms.

Not all sausage finger situations are the result of dactylitis. There can be fluid retention alone without significant inflammation as well. Otherwise known as edema, or oedema if you are in England, fluid retention in general typically affects all five, six, seven, or however many fingers you may have in each hand rather than just a single finger or a few fingers. Such fluid retention can result when your blood circulation in your hands is poor such as when you have heart failure. It can also occur when you don’t have enough protein (otherwise known as albumin) in your blood such as when protein leaks from your bloodstream into your urine via kidney problems.

Without closely examining the King or his medical records, it’s difficult to put one’s finger on what exactly may be happening with the hands of Charles III. Since his fingers have apparently had that appearance for a number of years, it’s less likely that his fingers are inflamed from an infection. One would presume that a member of the Royal Family would have access to proper antibiotics. After all, you don’t hear of too many Royal Family members wondering about what their insurance may cover. Beyond that, everything else about Charles’s hand health would be sheer speculation since he hasn’t hasn’t really handed over any info about possible diagnoses. Because, let’s be frank, you can’t really diagnose a medical condition such as “sausage fingers” from afar. One thing’s for sure, though, social media seems to be having quite sausage fest about his fingers.