Evaluating the Correlation between Severity of Pain, Clinical Symptoms, Duration of Disease with Electrodiagostic Findings in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Median nerve involvement in wrist is one of the most common compression neuropathy which drives patients to musculocutaneus clinics such as orthopedic, neurology, physical medicine and rehabilitation clinics. For estimating the extent of nerve injury, the level of patient's pain severity, clinical and abnormalities in electrodiagnostic (EDX) data are employed. The aim of this study was to access the correlation between degree of pain complain, clinical symptom severity and duration of disease with EDX findings. Subjects and During two years period, all the patients referred to Imam Khomeini hospital with pain in wrist and symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome were included. Correlation between the severity of clinical symptoms, disease duration and pain, with electrodiagnistic findings were analyzed statistically. A total of 370 patients (234 females and 136 males) were recruited in this study. Based on electrodiagnostic findings, 104 patients suffered from minimal type, 166 with mild, 59 with moderate and 41 with severe forms of the disease. The patient's report of pain severity did not show correlation with electrodiagnostic findings. But the duration of the disease was correlated with electrodiagnostic findings (P=0.0001, r= 0.35). The electrodiagnostic abnormality was correlated with the clinical symptom severity (P= 0.0001, r= 0.54). In order to evaluate severity of median nerve involvement in carpal tunnel syndrome, severity of patients clinical symptom and the electrodiagnostic findings are more reliable than severity of pain complain reported by patients.