For avocado lovers, this is a dangerous time of year. Thousands of people slice their hands and fingers every year while cutting avocados, and research shows that most of these injuries occur from April through July. Hand surgeons see these injuries so often that they have a name for it: Avocado hand.
The injury typically occurs when someone holds an avocado in one hand and wields a sharp knife in the other. When the knife slips, or the person loses their grip on the avocado as they’re cutting it, the knife can slice into their palm or fingers. It’s not uncommon for people to sever nerves and tendons.
In some cases, people stab themselves in the hand while using the tip of a knife to remove the pit. “I’ve treated people who’ve cut off a finger while slicing an avocado,” said Eric Wagner, a hand surgeon and associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Emory University in Atlanta. “Cutting an avocado seems so harmless, but we’ve seen some pretty bad injuries from it.
By far and away the most injuries I’ve seen are from avocado injuries.” Wagner and his colleagues encountered so many patients needing hand surgery because of avocado-related knife wounds that in 2020 they published a study that examined the phenomenon’s nationwide prevalence. They found that between 1998 and 2017, more than 50,000 people in the United States went to emergency rooms seeking treatment for avocado-related knife wounds.
Most striking was that the incidence of these injuries incre.
