ReviewCureus2022
A Comparative Analysis Between Ultrasound and Electromyographic and Nerve Conduction Studies in Diagnosing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
Review in Cureus, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Median nerve swelling in RA patients: an 8-year longitudinal MRI-based study.Insights into imaging · 2026Article
- Imaging of the intrinsic muscles of the hand - part I: high-resolution ultrasound and 3T MRI appearance of symptomatic anatomical variants.RoFo : Fortschritte auf dem Gebiete der Rontgenstrahlen und der Nuklearmedizin · 2026Review
- Body surface area-adjusted median nerve cross-sectional area and multimodal ultrasound improve diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome.Frontiers in surgery · 2026Article
- Review
- Evaluation of electrophysiological examinations for the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome.Journal of orthopaedic surgery and research · 2025Article
- Standardized High-Resolution Ultrasound Protocol for the Diagnosis and Monitoring of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: A Mixed-Design Observational Study.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Potential Use of a New Energy Vision (NEV) Camera for Diagnostic Support of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: Development of a Decision-Making Algorithm to Differentiate Carpal Tunnel-Affected Hands from Controls.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Article
- Identification of an Aberrant Transligamentous Branch of the Median Nerve during Carpal Tunnel Release using Ultrasound Guidance.Journal of hand surgery global online · 2025Article
- The causal relationship between thyroid dysfunction and carpal tunnel syndrome: A Mendelian randomization study.Medicine · 2025Article
- Comparison of ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging of the median nerve's recurrent motor branch and the value of its diameter in diagnosing carpal tunnel syndrome.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2025Article
- Ultrasound imaging: Enhancing the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome.Journal of hand and microsurgery · 2025Article
- Evaluating Various Ultrasound Criteria for Determining Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Severity.Radiology research and practice · 2025Article
- Diagnostic efficacy of high-frequency Grey-scale ultrasonography and Sono-elastography in grading the severity of carpal tunnel syndrome in comparison to nerve conduction studies.Skeletal radiology · 2024Article
- Article
- Reliability of Ultrasound Measurements of the Median Nerve in Asymptomatic Subjects Using a Handheld Device.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Carpal tunnel syndrome.Nature reviews. Disease primers · 2024Review
- Diagnostic Accuracy of Integrating Ultrasound and Shear Wave Elastography in Assessing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Severity: a Prospective Observational Study.Orthopedic research and reviews · 2024Article
- Utility of Ultrasound for Identifying Median Nerve Changes Indicative of Acute Carpal Tunnel Syndrome After Distal Radius Fracture.Journal of hand surgery global online · 2023Article
- Anomalous Flexor Digitorum Superficialis Muscle Belly Associated with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.Journal of hand surgery global online · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most common upper extremity neuropathy. The disease initially manifests as a sensory disorder in the form of paresthesia, numbness, or tingling of the fingers. The diagnosis is usually made based on history and clinical symptoms, which are confirmed using nerve conduction studies (NCS) and electromyography. More recently, ultrasound has gained more use in CTS diagnosis due to its advantages, which include patients' comfort during diagnosis, better visualization of anatomy and nerve forms directly, and cost-effectiveness. However, a literature review shows that the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound over NCS is still in question; therefore, the present systematic review was carried out to compare the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound to NCS and electromyography. A systematic literature search was performed on five electronic databases: PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, Embase, and Google Scholar. The search strategy limited the retrieval of literature published between 2000 and 2022. Of the 1098 articles retrieved from the electronic databases, only 12 met the inclusion criteria. A meta-analysis of outcomes from the included studies showed that the pooled sensitivity and specificity of the ultrasound were 0.80 (95% CI: 0.73, 0.88) and 0.90 (0.83, 0.96), respectively. On the other hand, combing the outcomes of electromyography and NCS resulted in sensitivity and specificity values of 0.89 (95% CI: 0.84, 0.95) and 0.77 (95% CI; 0.64, 0.90), respectively. The results show that ultrasound has comparable sensitivity and slightly higher specificity than NCS and electromyography; therefore, ultrasound can be used as an alternative diagnostic test for CTS. However, it cannot replace NCS and electromyography since more research needs to be done on doubtful and secondary cases of CTS.
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