Effect of early occupational therapy on improving the hand function and reducing the symptoms severity of patiants with carpal tunnel syndrome after surgery

One of the most common hand diseases is the carpal tunnel syndrome. The prevalence is over 2.9% in women and 6% in men. The disease has symptoms such as paresthesia, tingling and numbness, pain, and weakness in the thenar. The current treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome include non-surgical or care treatment and surgery. Carpal tunnel release surgery is recommended when the disease aggrevates and protective treatments are not efficient anymore. After surgery, scar adhesions, complex recurrent pain syndrome, sensitivity, inflamed scar area, and pain in the thenar and hypothenar areas may be observed for up to 8 weeks or more. In order to reduce and to prevent the development of complications after surgery, guidelines and recommendations are provided that are specific to Occupational Therapy; however, due to the lack of accurate information on when occupational therapy should start after surgery and considedring the importance of this issue in improving performance, reducing the severity of symptoms, and helping the patients return to work faster, the present study was conducted to examin the effect of early occupational therapy to improve performance and to reduce the severity of symptoms caused by carpal tunnel release surgery. The present study was a clinical trial and the population consisted of the patients reffering to Akhtar hospital with a diagnosis of idiopathic carpal tunnel syndrome and thus candidates for surgery. A total of 20 patients with an average age of 35-65comprised the final particiapnts of the study. Participants were divided into two groups. The experimental group, besides the common care advised by their surgeons, received occupational therapy with the same protocol during the first week after the surgery. Evaluations carried out for both groups prior to the surgery and one month after the surgery included hand function, symptoms severity by Boston questionnaire, and return to work time. The statistical anlysis of the findings revealed that occupational therapy program in the first week after a CTS surgery resulted in a decrease in symptoms severity (P=0.003), and a decrease in return to work time (P=0.001). Based on the findings, although both patient groups with carpal tunnel syndrome showed improvement in symptoms and functioning after surgery, early occupational therapy in the experimental group was shown to be significantly effective in decreasing symptoms severity and the return to work time compared with that in the controls. So, early occupational therapy on the patients with carpal tunnel syndrome is recommended.