ABSTRACT:
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is considered the most common of all entrapment neuropathies cause significant symptoms that interfere with normal life of the patients including parasthesia, numbness, weakness of thumb abduction. These symptoms might awake the patient at night. CTS can be treated by surgical and non surgical methods, however there is no consensus on the most effective method of treatment. Non surgical methods include (splintage, U/S, local injection). The aim of our study to compare one of the most efficient and safe conservative methods in the treatment of CTS with the most popular known method by surgical release of the median nerve at the carpal tunnel. In our study, 48 patients were randomly allocated 24 patients received local corticosteroid injection and 24 patients were treated by surgical method. All were diagnosed clinically and confirmed by electrophysiological study. The final results have shown that the injection group had short term improvement but the surgical method proved to be the most efficient method for long term final treatment.