Why do we know so little about return to work after carpal tunnel release?
In: Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, Jg. 44 (2018), Heft 6, S. 555-556
Online
academicJournal
Zugriff:
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is a common nerve entrapment with a prevalence ranging between 2.7–4.9%, depending on the definition, in a representative adult population (1). Among a pooled analysis of US working populations, prevalence of electrodiagnostically verified CTS was 7.8% and incidence rate 2.3 per 100 person-years (2), while in an Italian working population the incidence rate was 1.4 per 100 person-years (3). The lifetime prevalence of carpal tunnel release (CTR) has been estimated at 3.1% and incidence rate at 1.73 per 1000 person-years in a normal population (4), and somewhat higher (3.35–2.98 per 1000 person-years during an eight-year follow-up) in a population of working age (5), suggesting that a considerable proportion of those with CTS undergo surgical treatment. CTR is an effective treatment to relieve the symptoms of CTS in both the short- and long-term (6). In this issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, Newington et al’s systematic review (7) looked at return to work (RTW) times after CTR and reports a median RTW time of four weeks. This is in a good agreement with the Swedish recommendations for length of sickness absence after CTR (8). Only six studies reported information about the heaviness of work, and – quite expectedly – the RTW times were clearly longer for those with manual duties than non-manual duties, and the longest for those with heavy manual duties. In fact, we lack information about to what extent CTR is effective both as regards symptoms and resumption of work activities among those with heavy manual duties. As CTS can be considered in many jurisdictions as an occupational disease among workers with hand-intensive duties, some of those workers may have had their CTS compensated as an occupational disease under workers’ compensation and retrained to lighter duties after surgery. Change of occupation and retraining to lighter duties may lie behind the finding that those with workers’ compensation showed a longer RTW time compared with those without ...
Titel: |
Why do we know so little about return to work after carpal tunnel release?
|
---|---|
Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Viikari-Juntura, Eira |
Link: | |
Zeitschrift: | Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, Jg. 44 (2018), Heft 6, S. 555-556 |
Veröffentlichung: | Nordic Association of Occupational Safety and Health (NOROSH), 2018 |
Medientyp: | academicJournal |
ISSN: | 0355-3140 (print) ; 1795-990X (print) |
DOI: | 10.5271/sjweh.3771 |
Schlagwort: |
|
Sonstiges: |
|