Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Double Crush

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a fairly common ailment seen in a chiropractic office. It involves pain in the wrist and hand, along with numbness, tingling, and weakness in the first three fingers. Often patients will come in having already been diagnosed and having been through some type of previous treatment, such as medication or physical therapy. I have had patients that have undergone surgery and did well for awhile, but the carpal tunnel syndrome slowly returned. One possibility for this scenario could be post-operative scar tissue formation, as well as a return to the same activity that caused the problem in the first place.

Another reason that typical treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome may fail is a phenomena called double crush. Carpal tunnel syndrome affects the median nerve as it passes under the wrist. That median nerve is formed from branches of a group of nerve roots that are located in the neck. There could be a problem in the neck, damaging one or more of these nerve roots, while there is concurrently irritation to the median nerve at the wrist. If the neck problem is not addressed, the wrist and hand can still be affected.

Our approach is to evaluate both the wrist and the neck. In many cases, chiropractic care to the neck with physiotherapy modalities and exercises to the wrist are an effective combination.