Carpal tunnel injection problem
I have been diagnosed with CT in my left hand after having had mild to severe symptoms for a few years which have got worse in the last six months. I had two lots of CT steroid injections, over two years, which were an instant success and relieved the pain/numbness for well over six months. Three days ago, I was given an injection by my GP (moved to different area last year). The injection was excruciating, causing electric shocks in thumb, first and middle fingers followed by severe pain, numbness and swelling of my whole hand. I have resorted to co-codamol to help my sleep and ibuprofen during the day. I am wearing a splint all the time which I found no relief from before. Although the pain has subsided a bit now, I still have severe tingling in the ends of my fingers, particularly index finger, and I can't take any weight or basically use this hand.
I had CT in my right hand about 10+ years ago, had steroid injections and eventually CT op, all with little problem at all.
I completed the questionnaire on this website and only got a score of 65% so not sure I gave correct answers.
I am worried that I may have some long lasting nerve damage, is this likely?
Thanks for your reply. After the bank holiday, I had to go back to the gp practice and saw my original gp (not the one who gave me the inj.). He checked to make sure that there was no infection, confirmed that the nerve had been affected and prescribed another course of 7 day prednisolone. It is just over a week now and I took the splint off all day yesterday as my hand was aching, the only lasting problem I have is severe shooting pains down my index finger and between the middle finger with certain movement e.g. putting my socks on, doing clothes up, holding utensils, anything that involves spreading those two fingers really. The gp is trying to hurry along my referral to have the CT op but how long??
Waiting times for CTS surgery vary hugely around the UK - here it's about 2-3 weeks at present. Hopefully the nerve will not have suffered too much from what does sound like an intraneural injection. JB
Just received a letter today from gp to say that referral had gone straight to consultant and I should here in a month about the op. Fingers crossed (painfully). Hopefully not too long. Thanks for your reply. C
It will be interesting to see whether that turns out to be the wait to see the surgeon to start off with or whether they list directly for surgery - policies vary so much from place to place. JB
That sounds very likely to have been an injection directly into the nerve. The aim is to inject into the loose 'packing' tissue in the wrist, not into nerve or tendon. Depending on the steroid preparation used, direct intraneural injection can cause a variable amount of long-term damage. In an ideal world you would have some ultrasound imaging and nerve conduction studies done tomorrow but there is probably nowhere in the country that this could be done other than Canterbury I guess. What does the injecting GP say about it? JB