Learn CTS Treatment
Carpal tunnel syndrome treatments may be of different types, depending on the severity of it in the person who is afflicted with it. CTS can pass through different stages of severity, starting with finger numbness or tingling that can be “shaken out” and ending up as the inability to use the hand without pain.
If carpal tunnel syndrome is diagnose and treated in the earliest stages, the first line of treatment is a night splint. The splint keeps the wrist from becoming either bent back too far or hung down too far, thereby relieving the pressure on the median nerve. The splint should enable the sufferer to get relief from the tingling and numbness that come on in the night as they sleep. It’s also possible to wear the splint during the day if it’s determined that one is needed. Some people find relief from CTS with the splint treatment.
However, if this doesn’t provide complete relief, those afflicted with the condition may use aspirin, ibuprofen, or other NSAID pain medications to treat the pain. When used alone, these medications don’t cure the underlying carpal tunnel problem, though they do help reduce inflammation. These medicines make the symptoms more manageable, but may obscure the pain and make it more difficult to tell whether the CTS is resolving. In carpal tunnel cases that don’t involve inflammation, these medicines have no effect on the condition, and they certainly won’t alleviate the numbness or pins and needles sensation that many people experience. While they can help with short term pain relief, they can result in side effects when taken for an extended period of time. Aspirin, for instance, can cause bleeding in the stomach.
If these treatments prove to be ineffective, steroidal drugs are another option. For example, cortisone may be injected into the wrist just beneath the skin. In cases where carpal tunnel symptoms result from pregnancy, this is often a first choice for treatment. For some patients this treatment can provide relief from a majority of symptoms for up to six months, whereas others must seek more frequent injections to stave off the pain. The injections can’t be given more frequently than 6 weeks apart. They work by reducing the swelling and inflammation of the membranes and tendons that surround the median nerve.
Some people get electrical iontophresis, which is where electricity is used to move the drug’s molecules to the needed place. This is less invasive than the injections, but it also tends to be less effective.
When all other approaches have failed to provide relief, CTR, or carpal tunnel release surgery, is a last resort. This procedure requires cutting the ligament that sits at the apex of the carpal tunnel, and may be performed with a traditional, open incision, or endoscopically. Endoscopic surgery involves the use of a tiny catheter or endoscope with a camera attached that allows the surgeon to see the surgical area on a television monitor. This minimizes the invasiveness of the procedure. For a traditional, open surgery, a major incision is made and the wrist opened up so the surgeon can directly visualize the area as the ligament is snipped.
While all of these approaches have their pros and cons, and many people have found one or another of them to be effective, it’s important to realize that there are simple CTS exercises that can be used to effectively relieve carpal tunnel symptoms, without invasiveness, at little or no cost, and with permanent results. These exercises should be the first line of treatment against CTS.
Carpal Tunnel can virtually always be treated, but that doesn’t mean that the treatment is necessarily easy or desirable. Its effects can range from mildly annoying wrist, hand, and finger tingling that needs to be constantly shaken out to severe pain and partial debilitation of the hand. Tom Nicholson has discovered a treatment, carpal tunnel exercises that are so simple to do they can be done by anyone.
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