Infiltración de esteroides, férula de muñeca y fonoforesis en el síndrome del túnel carpiano

Introduction. There is some variety of conservative therapies for the carpal tunnel syndrome, but not a clear consensus about their use and effectiveness. The objective of this study is to compare the effectiveness of three of them: steroid injection, wrist splinting and phonophoresis. Patients and method. Single-blind, randomised clinical trial with blocking and stratification. We studied 52 hands with median nerve entrapment at the wrist, mild and moderate in severity, distributed in three groups corresponding to the three therapies compared. The outcome measure was the variation of clinical parameters and nerve conduction studies one month after each treatment ended. The statistical analysis included Spearman's correlation test, ANOVA and Bonferroni test. Significance level was set at p < 0.05. Results. The outcome of clinical parameters could not differentiate one treatment from another. Nerve conduction studies improved significantly in the steroid injection group when compared to the phonophoresis group, but not in the rest of the analysis. One nerve conduction parameter showed a minor significant improvement when compared to the basal study in the wrist splinting group. Phonophoresis had no effect on nerve conduction studies. Discussion. Nerve conduction studies were a good tool to evaluate treatment outcome in this study design. Steroid injection improved them more than phonophoresis, a treatment that had no detectable effects, whereas wrist splitting only produced minor improvement.