Levels of agreement of nerve conduction studies and symptoms in workers at risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Autor: Violante, Francesco S., Bonfiglioli, Roberta, Isolani, Lucia, Raffi, Giovanni B.
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Zdroj: International Archives of Occupational & Environmental Health; Oct2004, Vol. 77 Issue 8, p552-558, 7p
Abstrakt: Objective: Information is required on levels of agreement between different sets of median nerve conduction studies (NCS) and symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) in at-risk subjects.Methods: We performed a reanalysis of an extensive data set from a population of 114 “highly exposed” meat workers (without prior diagnosis of CTS), who were interviewed for the presence of current symptoms typical of CTS and systematically submitted to median NCS.Results: Agreement between presence/absence of symptoms and NCS normal/abnormal findings ranged from 81% for wrist sensory latency (WSL) to 49% for motor conduction velocity wrist-to-palm (MCV-WP) in the nondominant hands (from 60% to 50%, respectively, in the dominant hands). Mean values of WSL, sensory conduction velocity-WP (SCV-WP), wrist motor latency, MCV-WP, and the SCV-WP/SCV-elbow-to-wrist ratio all showed significant differences between symptomatic and asymptomatic workers. In nondominant hands, these parameters all reached significantPvalues at chi-squared tests for ? coefficients of agreement, the best ? coefficients being 0.57 for WSL and 0.40 for SCV-WP. However, in the dominant hand only SCV-WP reached significance (? coefficient=0.20).Conclusions: Given the importance of the dominant hand in working populations, these data support use of SCV-WP (or WSL) as an informative NCS parameter for occupational studies on CTS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index
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