5 Signs of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Your carpal tunnel is a space in between your wrist bones. This tunnel provides a passageway for your ligaments, tendons, and nerves to pass through your bones and reach your hand.

One of the main nerves that runs through your carpal tunnel is your median nerve. This nerve allows you to move your forearm and provides feeling to your hand and most of your fingers. When there’s any damage to or swelling in your carpal tunnel, the median nerve gets compressed, causing carpal tunnel syndrome.

Carpal tunnel syndrome can cause symptoms such as pain, tingling, and numbness in your hand and wrist since your median nerve can’t send out the correct type or amount of signals. If you have carpal tunnel syndrome, it can often be misdiagnosed as other conditions that present with similar symptoms.

Untreated carpal tunnel syndrome can lead to permanent nerve damage, so Anand Shah, MD, Mehul Taylor, MD, and the rest of our team at Valley Orthopedic Institute in Palmdale and Ridgecrest, California, want you to know how to recognize you have carpal tunnel syndrome and understand what your treatment options are.

What causes carpal tunnel syndrome?

Carpal tunnel syndrome can happen for several reasons, and anything that puts compression or excess pressure on your median nerve puts you at risk for developing carpal tunnel syndrome. Common injuries or health conditions that can irritate your median nerve and cause carpal tunnel syndrome include: 

• Arthritis
• Diabetes
• Hypothyroidism
• Sprains
• Wrist fractures

People who do repetitive motions with their wrists and hands like typing or swinging a hammer are at a high risk for carpal tunnel syndrome. Other risk factors include using a lot of power tools or being pregnant.

Do you have carpal tunnel syndrome?

These are the telltale signs that you might be dealing with carpal tunnel syndrome:

1. Numbness, tingling, burning, or pain in your hands and fingers
2. Shock-like sensations that spread through your hand and fingers
3. Pain that travels up your forearm
4. Weakness that makes it difficult to hold or grasp objects
5. Wrist pain that interrupts sleep

Symptoms of early carpal tunnel syndrome often come and go and usually develop very slowly. You may notice that symptoms are worse at night and then diminish during the day. As the condition develops your symptoms can worsen, causing a lot of pain, and you may lose a lot of your grip strength.

Treating carpal tunnel syndrome

If you seek medical help early from our Valley Orthopedic Institute team for your carpal tunnel syndrome, conservative treatments should be enough to address it. Nonsurgical options include:

• Wearing a wrist splint
• Getting corticosteroid or platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections
• Limiting activities using your hand/wrist
• Going through physical therapy 
• Taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)

These treatments can reduce pain and give your hand and wrist a much-needed break so your median nerve can heal properly. However, if your carpal tunnel syndrome has gone untreated for some time and the damage to your median nerve is significant, surgery may be needed to relieve the nerve pressure.

Our team will discuss all your treatment options to narrow down what will work best for you and explore whether or not surgery will be necessary.

For expert carpal tunnel syndrome diagnosis and treatment, look no further than Valley Orthopedic Institute. Schedule an appointment by calling your nearest office location or booking online today.