Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most common compressive neuropathy of upper extremity affecting predominantly females of middle age group. Symptoms include pain, paracsthesia, numbness in median nerve distribution of hand.

Comparative type of interventional study.

Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, SMS Medical College and attached group of hospitals, Jaipur.

One and a half years April 2014-October 2015.

To compare the efficacy of local ultrasound therapy and local corticosteroid injection for carpal tunnel syndrome management.

A total of sixty patients with CTS (agep>18 years) were randomly assigned to the steroid treatment plus splinting(group A) or ultrasound treatment plus splinting(group B).

The mean age of study population was 45.47±12.24 years with males comprising 13.3% and females 86.6% of whole study. At baseline all outcome variables were comparable statistically in both the groups (p>0.05). In follow-up assessment at 8th week, statistically significant improvement was obtained in all clinical and electrophysiological parameters in group A: Grip strength, symptom severity score, functional status score, median DML, sensory nerve conduction velocity (p<0.001 for each). Also the group B showed improvement in all parameters except grip strength. At the end of 24th week all outcome variables showed decline in improvement as comparative to 8th week, but still they were better than baseline in both groups. There was no significant difference between the groups in outcome variables except for the grip strength.

Ultrasound treatment provided improvement comparable to steroid injection in all clinical and electrophysiological parameters in patients with CTS except grip strength. Overall steroid therapy is more effective than ultrasound therapy. Effectiveness of treatment persist for at least 6 months then it lessens, so long follow-up is required.