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Carpal tunnel syndrome

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a medical condition in which the median nerve is compressed at the wrist causing symptoms like tingling, pain, coldness, and sometimes weakness in parts of the hand. It is the best known of a class of disorders called repetitive strain injuries. more...

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Anatomy

The median nerve runs through the carpal tunnel, a canal in the wrist that is surrounded by bone on three sides, and a fibrous sheath (the flexor retinaculum) on the other. In addition to the nerve, many of the hand's tendons pass through this canal. The median nerve is usually compressed by swelling of the contents of the canal. Other causes include soft tissue swelling in and around the tunnel or even by direct pressure from part of a broken or dislocated bone. However, bone dislocations are a rare cause of carpal tunnel syndrome that are a result of severe traumatic events.

Incidence

The syndrome is much more common in women than it is in men. It has a peak incidence around age 50 but can occur in any adult.

Symptoms

The first symptoms usually appear when trying to sleep. Symptoms range from a burning, tingling numbness in the fingers (especially the thumb and the index and middle fingers) to difficulty gripping, making a fist, or dropping things. Most early sufferers mistakenly blame the tingling numbness on their sleeping position, thinking their hands have had restricted circulation and are "falling asleep". If left untreated the symptoms often progress to intense pain which restricts hand functionality. It is known as a hidden disability, because people can do some things with their hands and appear to have normal hand function, but often live with severely restricted hand activity due to the pain.

Important: unless you have numbness as one of your predominant symptoms, it is unlikely your symptoms are primarily caused by carpal tunnel syndrome. In effect, pain of any type, location, or severity with the absence of significant numbness is not likely carpal tunnel syndrome.

Causes

Some cases of carpal tunnel syndrome are due to work-related cumulative trauma of the wrist. It is commonly caused by strain placed on the hand, for instance gripping and typing, which are usually performed repetitively in a person's occupation. The condition was first diagnosed in Australia in the 1980s when musicians started to use synthesizers heavily and people using these instruments started to get hand and wrist pain. The condition went mostly undiagnosed in the US until the mid 1990s when computers became more popular in the workplace.

There are a number of causes of carpal tunnel syndrome. They can be either traumatic, or non-traumatic.

Repetitive stress induced carpal tunnel strain is the leading cause of carpal tunnel syndrome in most industrialized countries. In the USA for instance, repetitive stress induced carpal tunnel syndrome is the biggest single contributing factor to lost time at work. This type of carpal tunnel syndrome results in billions of dollars of workers compensation claims every year.

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Steroid injection equal to surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome
From American Family Physician, 6/1/05 by Henry Barry

Clinical Question: Is local steroid injection for carpal tunnel syndrome as effective as surgery?

Setting: Outpatient (specialty)

Study Design: Randomized controlled trial (nonblinded)

Allocation: Concealed

Synopsis: Adults with carpal tunnel syndrome who were referred to a clinic that specialized in this condition were eligible to participate in this study if they had symptoms for more than three months and did not respond to two weeks of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug therapy and splinting. The authors confirmed the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome by electrodiagnostic testing. Patients were assigned randomly to surgery (n = 80) or local steroid injection (n = 83). One surgeon performed all surgeries and another surgeon gave all steroid injections.

The main outcome--severity of symptoms on a 100-point visual analog scale--was assessed via intention to treat. The authors defined treatment success as a 20 percent reduction in symptoms. This is consistent with other literature that suggests a 15 to 20 percent improvement is the minimum difference that is clinically meaningful. Because more than 80 percent of patients in the steroid injection group received two injections, the therapy in this study should be attributed to a course of two local steroid injections, not a single injection. The patients in each group were similar at baseline, and by the end of the study, more than one fifth of each group had dropped out.

After three months, 94 percent of the patients treated with steroid injections improved compared with 75 percent of the surgical patients (number needed to treat = five; 95 percent confidence interval, three to 13). However, by the end of 12 months, there was no significant difference in improvement between the steroid injection and surgical groups (70 and 75 percent, respectively). The high dropout rate in this study may confound these data.

Bottom Line: Patients with carpal tunnel syndrome do better with local steroid injections than with surgery in the short term. By the end of 12 months, however, the outcomes are comparable, even though more than 20 percent of participants in this study had discontinued treatment. (Level of Evidence: 2b)

Study Reference: Ly-Pen D, et al. Surgical decompression versus local steroid injection in carpal tunnel syndrome: a one-year, prospective, randomized, open, controlled clinical trial. Arthritis Rheum February 2005;52:612-9. Used with permission from Barry H. Steroid injection = surgery for carpal tunnel. Accessed online March 31, 2005, at: http://www.InfoPOEMs.com.

COPYRIGHT 2005 American Academy of Family Physicians
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

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