Injection for Carpal Tunnel

It is uncommon but some patients do get persistent pain for a few days after injection. If there are no other signs of trouble then the chances are it will settle without further treatment. What has happened to the CTS symptoms so far?

Incidentally I will move this discussion into the Canterbury patients forum once you have had a chance to see this reply. JB

The hand numbness has definitely improved and I have not woken up at night at all because of it. At the moment I have pain mainly in my thumb and wrist with pins and needles in my fingers from time to time. I am hoping that the pain will disappear in the next few days and that I will then experience the full benefit of having had the injection. I was told by the doctor who did the injection that I should have blood tests done to check for hypothyroidism as he said that this is often linked to carpal tunnel sydrome - do you see many people where this tends to be the case?

There is fairly good evidence of a link between untreated hypo-thyroidism and carpal tunnel syndrome. It is discussed briefly on the site here in a couple of places but the bottom line is that it has never been conclusively shown that screening patients who present with CTS, but otherwise appear to be healthy, for hypothyroidism is cost-effective. Obviously if the patient looks hypo-thyroid or has symptoms such as cold intolerance then a test is indicated anyway, regardless of whether you have CTS. I have wanted for some years to do a study where we would do the screening thyroid blood test on a few hundred patients who seemed in the clinic to be normal apart from having CTS and see whether we actually found any cases of hypothyroidism... but we have never got around to doing it yet. JB

I had the blood test for hypothyroidism yesterday and will let you know the results.