[The results of open surgical release in carpal tunnel syndrome and evaluation of follow-up criteria].

Abstract

We evaluated the results of open surgical release in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) and assessed the necessity of a clinical scoring system and electromyography (EMG) in the postoperative follow-up. The study included 24 wrists of 15 patients (9 females, 6 males; mean age 49.2 years; range 23 to 70 years) in whom a diagnosis of CTS was made by clinical examination and EMG. The patients underwent open surgical release and were followed-up for a mean of 21.5 months (range 7 to 40 months), during which they were evaluated by the Boston scale (BS) for clinical scoring and EMG. Postoperative findings of BS and EMG were compared in terms of their utility during follow-up. Statistically significant differences were found between preoperative and follow-up EMG values of motor distal latency, sensorial latency, combined motor muscle potential amplitudes, and sensorial latency amplitudes (p<0.05). Of twenty-four wrists, 16 (66.6%) showed improvement, and eight (33.3%) showed marked improvement. Similarly, preoperative and follow-up BS scores showed significant differences in favor of treatment results (p<0.05). The Boston scale scores and EMG results were found consistent in showing treatment outcome. Open surgical release of CTS provides favorable results that can be sufficiently evaluated by the clinical scoring system alone. Electromyographic studies do not seem to add extra benefits to the postoperative evaluation of patients with CTS.