Surgery or no surgery: Which works better?
Hello
If you have seen our 3-part series on the non-surgical treatments for carpal tunnel syndrome and one on the complications of carpal tunnel surgery, you are already more informed than almost everyone else.
This week we are going to compare the difference between the two.
The name of the study is “Is surgical intervention more effective than non-surgical treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome? a systematic review.”
“We included all controlled trials written in English, attempting to compare any surgical interventions with any conservative therapies.” This is how they did the study.
They found that “The weighted mean difference demonstrated a larger treatment benefit for surgical intervention compared to non-surgical intervention at six months for functional status 0.35( 95% CI 0.22, 0.47) and symptom severity 0.43 (95% CI 0.29, 0.57). There was no statistically significant difference between the intervention options at 3 months but there was a benefit in favor of surgery in terms of function and symptom relief at 12 months.”
Considering the risks to the patient they concluded that “Given the treatment differential and potential for adverse effects and that conservative interventions benefitted a substantial proportion of patients, current practice of a trial of conservative management with surgical release for severe or persistent symptoms is supported by evidence.”
Surgery is not a simple or risk-free alternative for any problem.
General anesthesia has a risk of you just drying from the drugs alone. We have not even started talking about the risks that come from performing the operation.
DO you want to put yourself at that risk? Or do you want to try something else?
Jason
