How To Manage Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Carpal tunnel syndrome, which causes tingling and numbness in your hands, is one of the most common hand disorders, often affecting people who do repetitive motions with their hands and wrists.

The condition sometimes will go away on its own, but it is far more likely that you will need the help of a medical professional. If you ignore it, you increase your risk for serious complications.

Like many conditions, the sooner you start treatment, the better your chances are of avoiding surgery. You’ll also have a better likelihood of a symptom-free outcome.

What Is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?

Carpal tunnel syndrome affects the median nerve, which runs through your carpal tunnel as it travels from your forearm down into your wrist and into the palm of the hand. This nerve is responsible for providing sensation to your palm, thumb, index and middle fingers (along with some sensation to your ring finger).

Trouble arises when that nerve becomes compressed. This usually happens in the wrist but can also occur in the forearm. In the early stages, you may notice a slow onset of symptoms. They are often intermittent at first, only showing up at night. Symptoms may include:

• Numbness, tingling, burning or pain in the thumb and fingers served by the median nerve. It may be strong enough to wake you up at night.
• Occasional shock-like sensations radiating through those fingers and your thumb.
• Pain and tingling that extends up into your forearm.
• In more advanced stages, the condition may cause you to be weak or clumsy, with difficulty performing everyday tasks that require fine motor skills.

The disorder affects up to 10 million people in the U.S. and is more common in women and older people. There may be hereditary links, with some people having smaller carpal tunnels. The condition is frequently seen in pregnant women because of hormonal changes that cause swelling and nerve compression.

But carpal tunnel syndrome is best known for affecting people who engage in repetitive motions, often for work. This includes people who work at desk jobs, painters, carpenters, assembly line workers and musicians.

What if You Just Ignore It?

For some people, the symptoms may never advance beyond the mild stage. But for others, they can become severe – though it won’t happen overnight.

Doing nothing about the condition while continuing to engage in the activities that caused it can have serious consequences for your health. It can progress to the point where your muscle actually starts wasting away in your hand.

You can lose sensation and feeling in your hand. This can make it difficult to perform simple tasks, including holding something without dropping it. The loss of feeling means you won’t be able to experience pain in your hands, robbing you of a feature that helps to keep you safe from injury.

And by allowing the condition to reach severe levels, surgery may be your only hope for treatment. But at that point, surgery may only stop the condition from getting worse and may not be able to reverse its progress.

Treatment Options

The first treatment option is wearing wrist braces while you sleep. That’s a time when you have the least amount of control over your wrists, which tend to flex at night. The braces keep your wrists in a neutral position, which often helps reduce the daytime symptoms.

If that doesn’t provide enough relief, your doctor may suggest steroid injections, which can serve two purposes. First, they may alleviate the symptoms. If that occurs, it also means you would likely do well with surgery. Steroids may be particularly helpful for pregnant women who are dealing with numb hands.

If wrist braces and injections don’t help, surgery may be recommended to open the carpal tunnel to relieve pressure on the nerve. The procedure can be done with an open incision in the palm of your hand or through an endoscopic procedure that uses a tiny camera and a smaller incision. With either option, recovery tends to happen quickly.