Long-term patient observation after conservative treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome: a summary of two randomised controlled trials

Background Physiotherapy of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) involves manual therapy based on neurodynamic techniques. Until now, two randomized controlled trials have shown that immediately after therapy, CTS patients who received neurodynamic techniques had significant improvement in nerve conduction, pain, symptom severity (SSS), functional state (FSS), muscle strength (MS) and two-point discrimination (2PD). However, long-term effects seem to be more important, as they are the only ones that can significantly improve the patient’s health and influence economic and social costs. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the long-term (six months) effects of neurodynamic techniques in the conservative treatment of CTS patients.