What do you get asked in your clinics about carpal tunnel?

do you usually get asked in relation to carpal tunnel? I mean with with the with the carpal tunnel they often ask when can I return to work so what I normally say to patients is look after the surgery which is under local anaesthetic the procedure is typically less than 10 minutes you will wear a bulky dressing for about 72 hours and then a waterproof dressing for 10 to 12 days thereafter the stitches or sutures are removed at two weeks the wound will have healed but the like any cut in the hand, it will remain tender for up to six weeks and takes that sort of time for the sensitivity to settle. Sometimes it can even take longer. If there's been a severe compression and it was very numb, then often it takes many months for the nerve to reset. The one thing that the patients are very grateful for and it goes straight away, it resolves straight away, is the waking up at night. If you release the nerve adequately, it will not cause them to wake up at night thereafter but then obviously the nerves, like most of these nerve problems, will take many months to recover. If you're a manual worker then I often advise them that it will take longer than they imagine for them to be able to use the hand effectively because it's the part of the hand where it takes a lot of trauma. So if you're a road digger or a gardener then the spade handle or other influence will be hitting that area, so you have to factor that into account when you're actually considering the surgery as well.