Signs and symptoms
How can you recognize carpal tunnel syndrome? Here’s a helpful list of signs and symptoms to suspect the diagnosis. If you think that you have this condition, talk to your doctor right away to find out the source of the problem.
- Numbness: This is one of the most common sensory symptoms. These patients often describe that their hands fall asleep or they stop feeling things in their hands. This is numbness, and it is a sensory problem of the median nerve. The symptom is intermittent and usually appears when using the patient’s grip.
- Tingling: Like numbness, tingling is a sensory alteration caused by nerve entrapment of the median nerve. It is an abnormal sensation of stings in the hand, also intermittent and often appearing when the patient is closing his grip.
- Pain: Pain is also commonly described, and it is found in the area where the median nerve innervates the hand. In these cases, it is essential to rule out other joint pain causes and certain neurologic diseases.
- Cold hands: The median nerve also maintains the temperature of the hands because it has autonomic fibers. Thus, patients commonly feel their hands very cold or very hot.
- Sweating changes: Another autonomic function of the median nerve is sweating. Thus, patients can develop sweating changes in their hands, which can be either no sweating or profuse sweating.