Carpal Tunnel

To be considered for the trial, patients had to be of the ages between 20-60 and have symptoms of pain, tingling, and numbness in the first, second, and third fingers. In this clinical trial, which was conducted in Iran, 60 patients were randomly put into three groups the point shockwave group, the sweep shockwave group and the control group. In the point shockwave group, the patients received 1500 low energy shocks perpendicular to the patient's palm over the median nerve on the carpal tunnel. In the sweep shockwave group, patients received 1000 shocks perpendicular to the patient's palm over the median nerve on the carpal tunnel and 500 shocks on the median nerve pathways. The third group was the control with patients only receiving physical therapy. Each group received 10 sessions of physical therapy. Patients were also instructed to wear a splint at night for the first two weeks of therapy and consume a 300 mg B1 tablet per day for 4 weeks. Treatments lasted four weeks and the results were pain and paresthesia (mild tingling, and numbness to severe persistent burning or pricking pain “pins& needles) improved in all three groups but the most improvement was shown in the Point and sweep shockwave groups. In conclusion, this study has shown that both radial shockwave therapy combined with physical therapy improved pain in patients with mild to moderate carpal tunnel syndrome. But the treatment of radial shockwave therapy could produce greater and longer lasting results than just physical therapy itself.  

Habibzadeh A, et al, (2022) 17:46, Journal of Orthopedic Surgery Research, 

The effect of radial shockwave on the median nerve pathway in patients with mild-moderate carpal tunnel syndrome: a randomized clinical trial 

 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8786622/pdf/13018_2022_Article_2941.pdf