severe pain 7 weeks post surgery
Hi.. I had a release on my right hand with no problems so went ahead with the left hand. It is now 7 weeks post surgery and have run into problems. I have severe pain from my wrist to elbow constantly. No tingling in my fingers but the pain I used to have when clenching my first has returned. I am seeing my consultant on May 10th and don't know what to expect.
Any advice?
Regards
They will be much harder to interpret without pre-operative studies for comparison but probably yes. One might also consider ultrasound imaging which can sometimes give further clues in this situation. It also needs a careful analysis of the pre-and post-operative symptoms to try and figure what has improved, stayed the same or worsened and what features are completely new. JB
Thank you again. I Can't help feeling my consultant hasn't been very thorough.
It's not long to May 10th now so I would wait and see what he/she has to say at that point. There may be some clues examining your hand or they might send you for further investigations or hand therapy depending on what they think the problem is. I don't think your consultant has done anything that is out of the ordinary for the UK - your successful operation on the first hand would be taken as evidence that the second hand, if the symptoms were similar in character, was also CTS and could therefore be operated without any prior investigation. I am curious about what patients are told, or at least understand, before surgery however. As you have probably gathered from reading this and other websites, there are a fair number of patients who do have problems after carpal tunnel surgery - did you get any real feel for what the risks of this were before either of the operations? JB
Hi Jeremy. My surgeon is very good at what he does so I'm not blaming him. Rather I think it's my carpal tunnel that is at fault. My surgeon said my left hand was very tight, tighter than the right which also was tight. He had problems cutting it. Before the operations I was given an information sheet but the only other information I deemed from this web site. Yes the 10th May is not long and I should get some answers at that time. Again, thank you.
In my experience surgeons always say that every CTS looks very tight when they are doing it. It's a pity we don't have any pre-operative NCS to tell us how bad it was really. JB
If you were my patient the first thing I would want to know is what the pre and post operative nerve conduction studies looked like so I would be sending you for more nerve conduction studies. There is a guide to analysing problems after surgery on this page of the website. JB