Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a problem that is ever increasing in our society.  A person with this will usually complain of numbness and tingling in their fingers and hand and will sometimes have a loss of grip strength.  This is often seen in people who work at keyboards all day and other repetitive motion-type jobs.  So lets take a look at what's happening in a person that suffers from this problem:

1. What's causing the problem in a carpal tunnel syndrome?
        - There are two main nerves that run down your arm and enter your hand that affect grip strength and sensations; your ulnar nerve and your median nerve.  In true carpal tunnel syndrome only the median nerve is affected since this is the only nerve that passes through the 'carpal tunnel', which is a passageway that this nerve and some tendons travel through in your wrist on their way to the hand.  In carpal tunnel syndrome the median nerve is being compressed at some point which thus interferes with proper nerve function.  This nerve compression leads to the 'numbness and tingling' sensation and the loss of grip strength.

2. What can an Active Release Technique (ART®) provider do for carpal tunnel syndrome? 
        - An  ART^® provider will use special muscle and ligament stripping techniques to mobilize the nerve through the ligaments and muscles that it passes through.  However, not only the carpal tunnel itself is treated.  The compression of the median nerve doesn't have to occur only in the carpal tunnel to cause the numbness and tingling symptoms.  Compression anywhere along the entire length of the nerve will cause the carpal tunnel symptoms.  The median nerve runs from your fingers, through your wrist, and all the way up your arm to join the cervical plexus of nerves at the base of your neck.  What an ART^® provider does is start at the end of the median nerve (down in your hand) and work his/her way back up your arm to manually release any spots where the nerve is adhering to other structures and getting compressed.  This means treating the nerve as it passes through the muscles in your hand, through the carpal tunnel, through the muscles of your forearm such as the pronator teres muscle, all the way up to where the nerve rejoins the cervical plexus.  This manual technique is not invasive and provides excellent results since the entire nerve is treated. 

3. What other medical treatments are available for this problem?
        - Surgery can be used as a means of treating this problem.  In the surgery, the transverse carpal ligament (which is the ligament that acts as the roof of the carpal tunnel) is cut to provide more room for the median nerve to pass through the carpal tunnel. 
        - Does the surgery work?  The surgery can help many people get back to a normal life.  However, like any other surgery it is not without its risks.  The numbers vary between sources, but the success rate of this surgery is definitely not close to 100%.  This may be due to compression of the median nerve in other spots besides just the carpal tunnel.  After a successful surgery there is also a significant chance of a recurrence in the next couple of years.  The recurrence could be partially due to the fact that after any type of surgery some scar tissue is formed, just like after any traumatic injury.  The scar tissue that develops in the carpal tunnel after a surgery could again compress the median nerve and again cause a carpal tunnel syndrome. 

    The surgery can be an invaluable tool for severe cases of carpal tunnel syndrome, yet it should only be considered after other conservative means of treating the problem have been exhausted.