any alternative to surgery?
24 September 2018 - 3:56pm
Hi all, I've been in pain with this for a few years, went to the consultant and he gave an electric shock that I couldn't tolerate. He then said unless I could handle the shocks he wouldn't be able to diagnose properly. And said if i didn't get treated I could lose the use of my hand. Since then it is much worse, hurts to carry shopping, use computer mouse, gripping anything is painful. Numb for a lot of the day and now pain in my shoulder. Are there any alternatives to surgery? I bought a splint but it pressed into my wrist and hurt more. Any advice is appreciated thanks.
A very small number of people are wholly unable to tolerate nerve conduction studies. More often it means that the person doing the test has the stimuator turned up too high. It would be very useful to get the results from the electrical studies as then you know what you are dealing with but if the patient really can't tolerate you can also get some useful infomration from an ultrasound scan - which is entirely painless. If a splint is hurting then it isn't fitted correctly - have you had a look at the instructions for how to fit a splint here on the website? Have you completed the symptom questionnaire on here - if not then please do so as that will give me a better idea of your symptom pattern. Finally, it is CTS and is not responding to a correctly fitted splint then a local steroid injection at the wrist is useful both for diagnosis and treatment. JB