help!!!
Hi, after extensive research to confirm my symptoms, I am convinced I have CTS. This was first apparent during my two pregnancies 12 and 15 years ago but it was never severe enough to see my GP. Since then, over the years I have had intermittent problems, mainly pain in my thumb when picking something up, affecting my grip and pains in my wrists.
Just recently, I have been waking up several times during the night with numb hands, this could be 3-4 times a night, most nights. After a particularly bad series of disturbed sleep I went to see my GP who sent me for nerve conduction tests.Much to my disappointment, the results did not indicate any problems with my nerves and they even kindly checked the ones in my neck as I had a neck injury approx 20 years ago. I am now waiting to see my GP as a follow up but not sure what he can offer me! As I sit here now on my laptop my fingers are tingly, my symptoms can be triggered by my position. Basically, I would be interested if anyone else has had similar experiences.
I await your responses with bated breath!
thank you for your speedy response, I feel a little happier that I am not imagining these symptoms and may actually have a problem! I went to my local hospital to have the testing done by the EEG dept, cant remember his title but he was very informative, or so I thought! My symptoms seem to fit perfectly with those of CTS, the pins and needles at night are the most troublesome at present and if this is CTS, it is certainly worse than its ever been.I have often wondered if my neck injury (jumped out of a large aircraft shelter door, hitting my head as I did so, ouch!), never really suffered long term but I worry that this could be a cause or in the least contributory. I also find that if I keep my hands in one position for any length of time they seem to stiffen - make jewelry as a hobby and use pliers to make my pieces so again this is adding to my discomfort. An MRI showed degeneration in L3L4 a couple of years ago but when having physio, it has been note that my thoracic joints are often very tight so need manipulation too in order to loosen me up effectively. My fear is that there is some sort of pressure on these nerves. Complicating the issue even further, I am currently suffering from a nasty tennis elbow and this seems to irritating my pins and needles, as I discuss these problems I sound as if I am falling apart! My GP who referred me for the NCS was not particularly sympathetic of my pain in the elbow, maybe she was hoping the test would be best done first before a steriod inj which she has given me in the past for my shoulders. As mentioned in my first post I am seeing another GP next week who I should have seen originally.I would be really happy to see if splints and injections improve my symptoms and I shall be asking for more investigations to rule out my neck being the problem.
Many thanks again for your reply.
It's very hard to rule out the neck as a problem. Most people over the age of about 20 show some evidence of wear and tear in the neck on MRI and it is always hard to know if what you see on testing is actually anything to do with the symptoms. We medics get a little tired of people coming in saying 'my test showed that I had disease x' - when usually medicine is not really like that. At least it was a neurophysiology department doing the NCS - in most departments now the next challenge is to figure out whether the person doing the testing is medically or scientifically qualified - probably the majority of NCS in the UK for routine indications like ?CTS are done by technical staff (Clinical Physiologist is the current title), not doctors. You can get hold of a splint for yourself as an experiment - they are not hugely expensive and are harmless. JB
thanks! He was a clinical physiologist. mmmmm. I will investigate buying a splint while I await my appointment. Many thanks for your replies.
Helen
Your questionnaire score is high enough that this still could be CTS with false negative NCS - the reliability of NCS depends to some extent on who did them but even in the best hands the sensitivity is probably only 95% so 1 in twenty hands will give normal results even though the problem is CTS. Nerve conduction studies are pretty useless for detecting problems in the nerves in the neck so if they told you they had checked those too that rings alarm bells with me - what sort of machine did they use and who did them? Possible ways forward include repeating the tests after an interval, looking at the ultrasound imaging which is sometimes abnormal when the NCS are normal, or a trial of treatment with splint and local steroid injection to see if it makes any difference. JB