Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Patients Happier With Endoscopic Surgery
Author(s):
Surgeons who prefer open surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome may want to take a second look at the endoscopic option.
Patients with carpal tunnel syndrome who have tried endoscopic surgery on one hand and mini-open surgery on the other hand were more satisfied with results of the former.
The study that reveals this preference involved 52 subjects in Seoul, Korea, with an average age of 55. Most of them were right-handed. They’d had three months of treatments before surgery, and their pain was graded according to American Association of Electrodiagnostic Medicine criteria. Subjects were also evaluated preoperatively using the Boston Carpal Tunnel Questionnaire (BCTQ) and DASH.
The endoscopic surgery was performed on the right wrist, the open procedure on the left. After three months, BCTQ and DASH analysis showed essentially no physical differences between the results of the two procedures. But patients were more satisfied with the endoscopic results, because they felt less scar and pillar pain, and that only transiently.
The study was reported in Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research.
