Not sure whether to keep appointment....
Firstly, what a great idea to have a forum for patients to communicate with consultants.
Secondly, I have an appointment booked for NCS on the 12th Feb, after being referred by my GP. As usual, I don't have any faith that my GP put much thought into the referral. I have taken the diagnostic questionnaire and got 4% ANN and 3% LRP. My main symptom is numbness in my LH middle finger. I have taken to using a wrist support for the last few weeks, which seems to have made a significant improvement to the point where the numbness has pretty much gone. If I stop using the support however, it comes back. I have never had any pain and can't recall ever having any pins and needles that weren't obviously caused by sitting on my hand etc.
My question is, is it worth keeping my appointment to have the studies done with the symptoms I have? I'm wondering whether a few more weeks (months?) of rest using the support may sort the problem.
I am still interested in the group of patients with low symptom scores, though I am aware that I am not going to be able to help many of you because the only thing I really treat is CTS and only a few people with low scores turn out to have any evidence of CTS when tested. If you can spare the time to come and be tested than that adds to our database of information for research and perhaps in the future we might learn something useful about the 'low score' group which might allow us to direct people like you in a more productive direction. If you would rather skip the appointment for now that's also fine but I would appreciate a follow up message on here in due course saying whether the symptoms did indeed go away or whether another diagnosis became apparent. At the moment I believe that quite a high proportion of the people who get referred to me with possible CTS, but for whom we do not produce a definite diagnosis, turn out to have self-limiting symptoms - but I could be wrong. JB
I would suggest that you keep your appointment. If the splint/ wrist support has been helping your symptoms then that is supportive of a diagnosis of carpal tunnel. The tests do not take long and should provided you with some additional information. Dr Bland may have more to add to this. EK