What surgeons won’t tell you about carpal tunnel syndrome
First your fingers were tingling and numb just during the night. It kept feeling as if they had “fallen asleep.”
Now, however, the pain sometimes goes into your forearm, especially when you wake up. And you’ve started getting that pins-and-needles sensation in your fingers during the day, too. Mysteriously, your pinky finger is just fine!
If that sounds like you, chances are good you’re a textbook case of carpal tunnel syndrome.
But before you join the ranks of the hundreds of thousands in the U.S. who undergo surgery for this condition, some new research has found a way to make your pain disappear without ever going near a scalpel.
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is one of those conditions that you keep hoping will just go away on its own. And you probably noticed that the pain and numbness — at first anyway — hits you at night, making you want to shake out your hand to try and get some relief.
But the thing with CTS is that if you don’t address it in a timely way, it can cause even more trouble.
The condition happens when the median nerve, which travels the length of your arm to your hand, gets compressed in a part of the wrist aptly named the “carpal tunnel.”
Lots of things can make that carpal tunnel become inflamed or swell and press on that nerve, but most often it’s due to repetitive motions — especially typing.
And as I said, it can get worse if left untreated, with possible permanent nerve and muscle damage that can cause you to lose strength in your hand.
That’s probably why around half a million people in the U.S. have surgery every year to fix it. Of course, you’ll be told how common and easy that procedure is — no big deal.
But anytime they slice into you, it is a big deal. And get this: Around a quarter of these procedures don’t last and need to be done again! Can you imagine that kind of failure rate being called a success?
Which brings me to some new findings from Spain.
Researchers from the King Juan Carlos University followed the progress of 100 women with CTS. Half got surgery, and the other half only got physical therapy.
The physical therapy sessions were done once a week for just three weeks. Therapists used “hands on” techniques on the neck, shoulder, forearm and elbow, focusing on the median nerve. The only thing the therapy patients did at home were some neck-stretching exercises.
After just four weeks, the patients who had the physical therapy were doing significantly better than the surgery group. Actually, it took the surgery patients another two months to just catch up to them!
And the therapy patients, despite the fact that close to 40 percent were suffering from “severe” CTS, had the same amount of pain reduction as the women who got the operation.
According to study co-author Joshua Cleland from Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire, despite how bad someone’s CTS is, “manual physical therapy may be just as beneficial” as surgery. And when you consider the failure rate of that operation, it looks to be even better!
Now, the kind of hands-on therapy done for those patients in Spain isn’t anything different than what you can get in the U.S., said Dr. Cleland. And it’s something that should be the “standard of practice” for any therapist working on a CTS patient, he said.
Of course, carpal tunnel surgery is a real cash cow for doctors, so don’t be surprised if that hand and wrist surgeon you’re seeing is less than thrilled with the idea.
But remember, it’s your hand, your pain and your money.
And most of all, it’s your decision to make.
“Physical therapy equals surgery for carpal tunnel” Don Rauf, March 24, 2017, HealthDay, webmd.com
