The treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome is a combination of non operative and operative measures. A lot of it depends on the patients severity of carpal tunnel and what they’ve tried before they see us. Mild carpal tunnel or early on carpal tunnel, we often treat conservatively. That includes modalities such as physical therapy, splinting and anti inflammatories and activity modification. When you get more advanced disease process or disease process that’s not responsive to conservative measures usually we try either steroid injections or surgery.
Some people with mild carpal tunnel, can be managed for the rest of their life with conservative stuff like, splinting, anti inflammatories, activity modification and hand therapy. There is a large proportion that it does progress on to, need an surgical intervention.