Why carpal tunnel is one of the most misdiagnosed issues

Hello all!

My name is Elliot and I'm a doctor of physical therapy with 1HP

We are a team of doctors who work in the esports industry and treat professional gamers.One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that carpal tunnel is the main issue we treat and it actually accounts for less than 1% of the cases we see.

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a thickening of the carpal tunnel ligament and that causes compression of the nerves that travel through the carpal tunnel space.

This causes numbness, tingling, and pain through the median nerve distribution of the hand which includes the middle index and thumb fingers.

Actual cases of carpal tunnel occur usually after years of repetitive stress that causes the ligament to thicken.

Tendonitis on the other hand is inflammation of the tendons that pass through the carpal tunnel and the swelling can mimic the thickening of the carpal tunnel ligament but getting surgery on the ligament will do very little to actually reduce the swelling of those tendons.

Many doctors do not take enough time to thoroughly screen out tendonitis vs carpal tunnel syndrome and set people up on a path that leads to injections, surgery, and failed healing.

Symptoms that indicate you likely DON'T have carpal tunnel include:

- Burning pain, numbness or tingling anywhere other than the middle, index or thumb fingers.

- Any pain, numbness or tingling above the wrist

- Hand or wrist pain without numbness or tingling

I've been digging through this reddit for a while and I see a ton of posts from people that have these symptoms that think they have carpal tunnel.

Fixing tendonitis is actually quite simple with some rehab exercises and we made a free guide to learn how to do that here: https://1-hp.org/gaming-wrist-pain/

I would HIGHLY encourage anybody to try these exercises for several weeks before even thinking about getting surgery or injections.

Some other resources we have made include this article and video that explains carpal tunnel a little more thoroughly:

Carpal tunnel from gaming: https://1-hp.org/carpal-tunnel-from-gaming/

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in gamers, is it real? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Q1TwogTps&ab_channel=1HP

Again gaming is our primary audience so a lot of the resources are geared towards that but these principles can apply to anybody that does repetitive work like, coding, drawing, grocery bagging, bar tending, etc.

This isn't direct medical advice and the only person that can make decisions about your health are you and your doctor, but I've personally seen so many people deal with these issues without fully getting clear direction from their MD.

If you have any questions I'm more than happy to answer in the comments but I'm hoping this can help at least 1 person.