Carpal Tunnel Treatment

In This Article:
Stop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Carpal Tunnel Symptoms
Carpal Tunnel Treatment
Carpal Tunnel Exercises

The first step towards treatment is to not ignore pain in your wrist. If you feel pain, cease whatever you’re doing immediately. Stretch out a bit, ice it if necessary. If you feel the pain or discomfort decline or go away, resume what you’re doing, but resume it gradually, and remember to keep your wrist straight. If you are unable to cease what you’re doing, change your approach to such a way that your wrist is not stressed. Take breaks, stretch it out, and consider doing other things so that you aren’t grinding away with your hands for longer than one to two hours.

Other considerations include:

• Warming up your hands prior to the activity. This can include wrist circles (see end of article) to stretch your fingers and wrists. Do them every hour.

• Using wrist support pads with a computer keyboard. These help maintain your wrist in a straight alignment.

• Applying ice or a cold pack to the palm side of your wrist. Apply it for between five and ten minutes as necessary.

• Taking an over-the-counter anti-inflammatory. OTC pain relievers such as aspirin or ibuprofen can help reduce some of the swelling.

See your doctor if one of the following occurs:

• Severe pain or numbness does not go away despite rest and/or taking a pain reliever

• Your hand grip becomes increasingly weak

• Minor symptoms do not improve despite a month of treatment at home

• Numbness persists after three to four weeks of self-treatment. This is especially important because long-term numbness can lead to permanent loss of the function of your hand.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: Medical Treatments

Your doctor has a number of options to treat CTS. They include use of a wrist splint to stabilize the wrist, which can be combined with a change in hand position during the activities that cause the discomfort and pain in the first place. Your doctor may also recommend or prescribe over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medications.

If these measures fail to alleviate your symptoms, another option is a steroid injection, which can help if pain or numbness persist over a longer period of time. Steroid injections can be performed in an office setting by a rheumatologist, a hand specialist or any physician with experience in the procedure.

Sometimes physical therapists apply ultrasound treatments, which help to reduce the inflammation of tissue. A University of Vienna in Austria study from the mid 1990s found that such treatment did in fact decrease CTS symptoms among a majority of patients.

One of the treatments of last resort—if, in other words, other treatments have failed and the weakness in your thumb persists—is carpal tunnel release surgery. This procedure alleviates pressure on the nerve by cutting the carpal tunnel ligament that covers the median nerve. Performed by a surgeon and often on an outpatient basis, carpal tunnel release surgery has shown to be effective provided severe weakness in the area has not progressed.

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