Prevalence of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Among Architecture Students

Background: Since they spend many hours on drawing for their work, architecture mostly deals with hand and wrist issues. When too much wrist and fingers movement for sketching causes entrapment of median nerve. Objective: This research aims to determine the occurrence of carpal tunnel syndrome amongst architectural students. Methods: This cross-sectional study has focused on the Architecture department at COMSATS University, Islamabad. Included were 165 men and women architects ranging in age from 18 to 30 years. Students with wrist fractures, any hand disorders, and arthritis of wrist were not included into this research, nevertheless. However, the Tinel’s and carpal compression test, Boston Carpal Tunnel questionnaire helped to gather the data. SPSS version 23 was used in evaluation of the material. Results: With mean age of 22.0 ± 1.96 years, out of 165, females were 55.8% and males were 44.2%. While 26.7% positive compression test, 42.4% of participants showed positive Tinel sign. About the thenar muscles’ weakening, 30.3% complained of morning stiffness and 38.2% felt weakness. FSS distribution showed mild, 8.5% experienced moderate and rather few people had severe difficulty 3.6%. The study found no substantial correlation amongst functional status scale and the factors like gender, hand and wrist discomfort, numbness, weakness of thenar muscles and trouble grasping things (p>0.05). Conclusion: According to this research, majority of the CTS-suffering architectural students are FSS has no appreciable correlation with other factors like gender, hand and wrist discomfort, numbness, weakness of thenar muscles and object grasping problems.