Prognosis?
I am not sure whether it is possible to answer this question( but anyway!) I have been diagnosed as having CTS and had a couple of very painful episodes in February. After seeing the GP I saw a specialist who suggested surgery. Since when I have had annoying symptoms rather than pain during the day and have tried to always wear a splint at night which helps a lot. Not sure if I should wait to see what happens or proceed with surgery.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply.
I have had the condition for about 4 years but as I only got tingling, pins and needles and slight pain/ numbness during the day and the pain at night was spasmodic I had not sought much help. However in the Spring things had deteriorated a lot and I was keen to get relief. In the last few weeks there has been an improvement so I was wondering whether it would be ok to adopt a wait and see approach or if I was risking damaging the movement in that hand as suggested by comments from the GP.
If it feels as though it is getting better then that subjective impression is usually accurate (as long as you are not diabetic at least). ie it is not likely that you are suddenly going to wake up one morning with a paralysed hand if the symptoms had been improving. Ultimately however the only way to be completelly certain that the nerve is not developing irreversible damage is to carry out serial nerve conduction studies. Have yours been done at all? JB
I would be curious to know what your surgeon said were the resons for operating and about the possible outcomes for:
a) doing nothing
b) splinting only
c) steroid injection
d) surgery
These are the main treatment options for CTS. There is quite a lot of information about which factors are known to influence the outcome in the prognosis pages of the site (look under the treatments tab). The most useful things to know are what your nerve conduction studies look like, how long it is since the very first symptoms, what your occupation is, and whether there is any obvious cause for your (presumed) CTS.
We are currently working on ways of predicting the outcome of the various treatments in individual patients but the maths is not ready to use yet. JB