A year after surgery
26 August 2017 - 1:06am
I had carpal tunnel release surgery on both hands a year ago and nothing but problems ever since. I have pain in my hands up my forearms and tingling and numbness in my fingers. I also have no grip strength constantly dropping things. I finally got the dr to listen to me and he did another emg which shows I still have it it's a little bit better than last year but not much. He wants me to go to hand therapy do you think that will help after all this time or is it just more of a waste of time and money? I kinda feel like he doesn't want to admit it's a failed surgery. Thank you
Hand therapy in this situation is unproven but at least it helps you to feel that an attempt is being made to resolve the problem and 'unproven' doesn't mean that it doesn't help - just that it's very difficult to carry out randomised controlled double blind trials of such things. You will see from other threads on here that the first thing I always want to do in such cases is compare the before and after surgery nerve conduction studies. Successful surgery is usually associated with a two grade improvement in the NCS so if they are two grades better you can usually assume that at least the operation has been done correctly. The pre-operative studies also give you some clues as to how long one would expect things to take to improve. Ultrasound examination can also help to identify some problems with the operation, but not all. JB