Physical Therapy is effective for treating Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Authors of a new study on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) say when you toss out the splints, steroid injections, lasers and other treatments often lumped in with physical therapy as part of a “conservative” approach, and focus solely on a debate about surgery vs. specific multi-modal physical therapy, physical therapy makes a compelling case for itself.

How compelling? Researchers found similar improvement in self-reported function and CTS symptom severity for both surgical and physical therapy patients after one year. However, the physical therapy group reported more significant gains in terms of recovery in the first month. That speedier gain early on is worth noting, researchers believe, because it allows these patients to return to work and other activities sooner than their peers who underwent surgery. Results were published in the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy. The study, conducted in Spain, focused on 100 women who had experienced CTS symptoms for at least a year.

Once accepted into the program, the women were randomly divided into two groups of 50: One group received endoscopic decompression and release of the carpal tunnel through surgery, and one group received three treatment sessions of manual therapies that targeted areas “anatomically related to potential entrapment of the median nerve (e.g., shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist and fingers). The women in the manual group showed improvement in self-reported function as well as pinch-tip grip force. The physical therapy group showed average one-month gains that exceeded those of the surgery group in both function and strength.

“The findings of the current study have potential clinical implications and open new lines of research,” authors write. “Because better short-term outcomes were found with manual therapy, patients may be able to return earlier to their activities of daily living and work when they receive manual therapy, compared to those who undergo surgery.”

While earlier studies tend to give surgery the edge over conservative treatments, those “conservative” approaches usually lumped in physical therapy with a host of ineffective treatments including splints, steroid injections, lasers and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation. Authors of the current study say theirs is the first to make a clean comparison between surgery and well-defined multi-modal manual therapy.

This study shows what we at Franklin Rehabilitation have always preached. Carpal tunnel is due to an impingement of the nerve, but it might not be at the level as the wrist as often as is believed. A good therapist is going to look at the entire kinetic chain from the neck all the way down to the hand. The study proves that in the case of carpal tunnel, surgery may not the best option and many times physical therapy can help you avoid going under the knife.

If you have any questions about this or any other physical therapy issues, please contact us at (414) 425-9700. We’ll even set you up with a free pain screening.