Withdrawal: “Efficacy of cervical manual therapy plus conventional physical therapy on clinical outcomes in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome: A double blind randomized controlled trial” Milad Zarrin, Maryam Saadat, Mohammad Jafar Shaterzadeh Yazdi, Davood Shalil Ahmadi

Abstract

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most common entrapment neuropathy. Current physical therapy treatment options show limited effects or low-quality evidence, especially in the long-term. To date, there has been little research to look at the effects of treating the cervical spine for decreasing symptoms distally to the carpal tunnel. So the aim of this study was to compare the effects of cervical manual therapy plus conventional physical therapy with conventional physiotherapy only in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Subjects. A group of 46 patients with CTS was randomly allocated into two groups: Cervical manual therapy plus conventional physiotherapy (n = 23), and conventional physiotherapy (n = 22). All patients received 10 sessions of supervised intervention treatment for 2 weeks. The efficacy of the therapies was assessed before initiation of therapy and after completion of therapy using a visual analog scale (VAS), a symptom severity scale, the functional capacity scale of the Boston Carpal Tunnel Questionnaire (BCTQ), functional status of DASH questionnaire, measurement of median nerve motor distal latency (mMDL) and median sensory nerve conduction velocity (mSNCV). Cervical manual therapy plus conventional physiotherapy group showed significantly greater improvement in VAS, DASH score, mMDL and mSNCV (p < 0.05) compared to the conventional group. There was no significant difference in BCTQ for two groups (p > 0.05). The analysis of the results showed that conventional physiotherapy combined with Cervical manual therapy could be more effective in improving the pain, functional abilities, median nerve motor distal latency and median sensory nerve conduction velocity of patients with CTS compared with conventional physiotherapy only.