New candidates for treatment and management of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) based on Avicenna's teachings in the Canon of Medicine

Abstract Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is defined as a compressing median mononeuropathy. CTS is one of the major costly debilitating diseases of hand. Although, CTS is a relatively recent concept in current medicine, some evidences show that it was familiar for medieval physicians in Persian Medicine (PM) like Avicenna. The PM textbook written by Avicenna: the Canon of Medicine definitions of the anatomy of carpal tunnel and median nerve, mononeuropathy and offers for prevention and treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome (called as Vaja al-asab and Khadar ) in the chapter of nerve diseases. The book describes not only symptoms including pain, paresthesia, hypoesthesia, tingling, numbness, but also the etiology such as Nerve compression (entrapment neuropathy); non-physical reasons like disturbed balance among the four body humors; alteration in the nerve temperament ( Mizaj ) that prevent the transmission of nerve impulses; and the others such as nutrition, mental condition, sleep, weather condition, body movements, and proper disposal of body waste. Furthermore, the book suggests life style modification method based on six factors, and 10 prescriptions composed with 85 natural product that are not actively used for CTS treatment in modern. The medicinal suggestions for CTS in the Canon of Medicine will be good candidates for discovering new treatments beyond the historical meaning of insights about 1000 years ago.