So scared!

With a bit more information we can try to predict what your chances of a good result are. The main things we want to know are:

1) whether you have had nerve conduction studies done and what the results showed

2) whether you have previously had it treated by steroid injection and how it responded

3) whether you are otherwise medically fit, or if there are complicating factors such as diabetes

Without knowing a bit more about the individual all one can say is that the majority of operations do result in a good outcome for the patient. JB

Hi Jeremy

I have had a steroid injection which took care of some of the pain but my fingers continued to get numb which got worse and worse. Still have the pinging in my wrist, swelling and tingling. I have not had any other tests. I have hypothyroidism but no diabetes. This all came on incredibly quickly after a neck pain. My whole arm got numb at night then localised to my hands. I'm talking weeks not months. Hope this helps and thank you.

Well you have a pretty high score on the diagnostic questionnaire here and a partial response to injection so we can be reasonably confident that the diagnosis is right and people with that combination of findings will often have quite severe CTS so surgery may well be your only real alternative. It's a pity that no nerve conduction studies have been done as they give an objective measure of the degree of nerve damage - something which is hard to judge by looking at the hand until a very late stage. Assuming that you are having surgery done by someone who does a reasonable amount of carpal tunnel surgery you probably have a 70-80% chance of a good result from surgery and something in the region of a 2-10% of ending up with more problems than you started with. We could be a bit more precise about that if we had the nerve conduction studies. JB

Thank you Jeremy. That helps. I do not know why a nerve conduction study was not done. The surgeon seems quite satisfied that it is CTS.

I will try and let you know how it went but I will have to type left handed which might be a challenge.

Thanks and regards
Debbie

Many UK surgeons view NCS as a 'diagnostic' test which is un-necessary if they are confident that the diagnosis is right anyway. When you view it like this they are right, but they are unaware of the value of NCS in predicting the outcome of surgery and in the assessment of what has gone wrong when surgery fails. This is partly the fault of the existing scientific literature on the subject which is extensive and confusing, with many contradictory results, and one can understand surgeons who have read a little of it just throwing up their hands and concluding that if the people writing these papers can't come to some consensus then they can't be bothered ordering the tests - especially if they work in an area where that might delay surgery (waits used to be very long but are now mostly quite short - despite all the stories about the collapsing NHS).

I'm not local to Reading so I don't know your local people. Usually I try to keep the names of other practitioners off here unless they contribute directly themselves but at the moment the mention you have made above is pretty neutral. If you do come back to us with the outcome of surgery we might have to think about whether to edit this thread to anonymise it I think, but I would like to know how the operation turns out. You can always use email if necessary to keep it private. JB

Thank you Jeremy. I have edited my last post. Sorry for breaking the rules.

Regards
Debbie