The association between menopausal status and clinical outcomes of female patients with carpal tunnel release: a retrospective observational study

Abstract

Background

The relationship between menopausal status and clinical outcomes of female patients with carpal tunnel release (CTR) has been not clearly investigated. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical outcomes of CTR among women with different menopausal statuses.

Methods

Two hundred-eighteen consecutive female patients with carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) who underwent surgery at our hospital between May 2016 and May 2020 were included in this study. Based on whether subjects had undergone menopause before surgery, they were divided into three groups: the premenopausal group, the early postmenopausal group (less than 10 years since menopause) and the late postmenopausal group (more than 10 years since menopause). The clinical outcome was assessed before surgery and at six-month postoperative visits using the Boston Carpal Tunnel Questionnaire (BCTQ).

Results

There were 86 patients in the premenopausal group, 70 patients in the early postmenopausal group and 62 patients in the late postmenopausal group. All the groups showed significant improvements in their Symptom Severity Scale (SSS) and Functional Status Scale (FSS) compared with preoperative scores. Although, there was a significant difference between the groups based and post-surgical SSS and FSS (p < 0.05). Patients in the postmenopausal group had less improvement in SSS and FSS in comparison with those in the other groups (p < 0.05).

Conclusions

Our results showed that all the groups had significant improvement in their SSS and FSS. However, the clinical outcomes were poorer in late postmenopausal patients than in premenopausal or early postmenopausal patients. These findings can be used in pre-operative counseling and interpretation of outcomes in women with CTR.

Keywords:

• Carpal tunnel syndrome
• clinical outcomes
• menopausal status
• Boston carpal tunnel questionnaire

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the Clinical Research Development Center of Taleghani and Imam Ali Hospital for their wise advice.

Authors’ contributions

EA, SRB and FK had the idea for this study. EA, SRB, MR and AA participated in outlining the concept and design. SA and FK did the data acquisition. EA and MR did the statistical analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. EA, FK and AA revised the final manuscript. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Funding

There was no external source of funding.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due them containing information that could compromise research participant privacy/consent but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.