Understanding carpal tunnel syndrome and it's treatments

When you start developing symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, and your diagnosis has been confirmed by your family physician, sometimes an added diagnosis is getting something called a nerve conduction study, where you’re sent to a neurologist to test the level of slowing of that nerve.

A conduction test will often come back positive, and it will give you some idea of the degree of compression; not that that’s related, necessarily, to your symptoms, but it does help confirm the diagnosis.

Early in the disease, in the entity, when you start having numbness in your hands, most physicians will recommend bracing at nighttime. It will keep your wrist in a straighter position.

They may ask you to avoid positions of extreme extension or flexion of your wrist joint during the daytime at work, or at hobbies or sports that you do.

Your physician may put you on some anti-inflammatories to settle some of your symptoms, and some doctors will actually inject cortisone into your carpal canal that may help you temporarily.

The problem is, by and large, a progressive problem. So you may have mild symptoms for one day, and worse another, and month-to-month it may change. But the natural course of this is over years it will usually get worse.