When you’re dealing with an uncomfortable and disruptive condition like carpal tunnel syndrome, you want solutions that are effective and don’t further disrupt your life too greatly or lead to more discomfort.
Thanks to ultrasound guidance, the team of board-certified orthopedic surgeons at New Braunfels Orthopaedic Surgery & Sports Medicine is often able to check these boxes when we treat carpal tunnel syndrome thanks to ultrasound guidance available at our office in New Braunfels, Texas.
From initial diagnosis to treatment and even surgery, ultrasound is proving to be one of the most effective weapons in our carpal tunnel syndrome arsenal. Here’s why.
If you have carpal tunnel syndrome, which affects up to 10 million Americans, you likely already know that, for a relatively small problem, the effect can be more than a minor hassle.
The carpal tunnel, located in the underside of your wrist, is only about an inch wide, yet it provides passage for your median nerve, as well as nine flexor tendons that control the movements in your fingers.
If there’s any crowding in this small place, it can pinch the median nerve and lead to numbness, tingling, and sometimes pain in your hand and wrist. Less commonly, symptoms go the other direction, back up your arm toward your elbow.
Pain isn’t all that common with carpal tunnel syndrome, but the nerve compression can lead to functional issues thanks to numbness and tingling, which can be uncomfortable and disruptive.
Ultrasound technology is nothing new — it’s been around since the 1950s, and it’s been an extremely useful imaging tool in the medical world. With ultrasound, we use high-frequency sound waves and responding echoes to get real-time images of internal structures and functions in your body.
Because your carpal tunnel is so small, imaging can be tricky, which is where ultrasound excels. Using this technology, we can identify issues that lead to carpal tunnel syndrome, such as:
Research has found that ultrasound delivers the same diagnostic accuracy as nerve conduction studies.
From a patient’s perspective, ultrasound is a great option because it’s harmless and there’s no radiation exposure as with X-rays. From our perspective, we can use the information we gather from ultrasound to better chart your treatment path moving forward.
The role that ultrasound plays in carpal tunnel syndrome is far from over after initial diagnosis. Once we know what we’re up against, we come up with a treatment plan that often further relies on ultrasonography.
If we turn to steroid injections to reduce the inflammation inside your carpal tunnel, we use ultrasound to guide the needle to ensure that we target the right area.
An effective treatment for ongoing carpal tunnel syndrome is release surgery. Your carpal tunnel has bones on three sides, but the roof is formed by your transverse carpal ligament. As the name suggests, with release surgery, we cut the ligament to relieve the compression and allow blood to flow back into the nerve.
While this is already a small surgery, ultrasound guidance allows us to minimize the impact even further. Using ultrasound guidance, we have more visual detail, which allows us to use a mini-open technique — in other words, we only need to make small incisions rather than a large one across your wrist.
This helps speed up your recovery because the procedure is less invasive than open surgery and there’s less collateral tissue damage. It also means that you get a functional hand more quickly and more comfortably.
If you want fast and effective solutions for carpal tunnel syndrome, sit down with one of our specialists to learn how ultrasound can guide the way forward. To set up that consultation, contact New Braunfels Orthopaedic Surgery & Sports Medicine today. You can send your appointment request online or call 830-341-1386.
