Surgical outcome of endoscopic carpal tunnel release in 100 patients with carpal tunnel syndrome.

The purpose of this study is to present the surgical outcome of endoscopic carpal tunnel release (ECTR) for the treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). One hundred and thirty-one procedures (36 right hands, 33 left hands and 31 bilateral hands) of single portal ECTR were performed upon 100 patients (age range: 36-77 years, mean age: 52.9 years; 98 women and 2 men) with electrodiagnostically proven CTS for 2.5 years from 2001. Preoperative clinical severity and results of electrodiagnostic studies were compared with surgical outcomes at the minimal 3-month postoperative period. Among 131 cases 125 (95.4 %) with complete or significant relief of symptoms were satisfied and 6 (4.6 %) with partial or no relief of symptoms were dissatisfied. There were 2 cases of major complications (one with ulnar nerve injury and the other with ulnar artery injury) that developed in our early experience of ECTR and 1 case of recurrence. The grade of electrodiagnostic abnormalities was associated with surgical outcome but there was no statistical significance between them. The severity of clinical findings, age at onset and symptom duration were not correlated with surgical outcome. In conclusion, ECTR surgery was effective in relieving the symptoms of CTS with a low complication rate after the learning curve period. Thus, ECTR can be an alternative to the traditional open surgery and can be the first procedure for CTS with several advantages over open methods.