ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Minerva Ortopedica e Traumatologica 2001 August-October;52(4-5):185-94

Copyright © 2001 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English, Italian

The carpal tunnel syndrome (Etiologic and prognostic role of biological and professional risk factors)

Ferrero M., Pescarmona G. P., Romano C., Dutto E., Oprandi G., Parola P. G., Gullino A., Brach del Prever E. M.

Background. The interest in carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is linked to numerous factors. They include the need to identify subjects at risk, to define preventive measures and set up informative-educational parameters, to estimate the efficacy of the surgery carried out, evaluate the very high socio-economic costs and, above all, to its remarkable increase reported over the last few years. The aim of our study is: to assess the subjective, objective, professional (pre and post operative), laboratory tests and instrumental data (pre-operative only), in patients with CTS, with the purpose of observing clinical results obtained after surgery and to compare the distribution of the biological and professional risk factors in subjects who benefited from surgery (group A) compared to those who did not obtain complete recovery (group B)
Methods. The cohort included 55 subjects (46 female and 9 male) with a diagnosis of CTS, for whom surgical approach had been chosen. All were operated on by the CTO, CRF and Maria Adelaide Hospital Group, Turin between 2nd March and 29th June 2000.
The study took into consideration such aspects as the specific work task, any presence of elements like individual hypersensitivity, clinical history, the diagnostic stages and any pre-surgical conservative treatment. Finally, the individual risk factors and the results of the blood tests were correlated with surgical outcome at a 3 month follow-up.
Results. Among the various individual risk factors there was one statistically significant difference in the parameters menopause, body mass index (BMI) >30 with menopause, oral undertaking of estroprogestinics, hypothyroidism and viral hepatitis.
Conclusions. Our study has shown that these individual factors not only predispose subjects towards the development of CTS, but also influence the outcome of the surgical treatment.