

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is the most common nerve compression disorder of the upper extremity with prevalence rates of 3% among women and 2% among men. For the clinician, it can be challenging to distinguish between cervical radiculopathy and CTS. For this reason, Wainner et al. (2005) developed a clinical prediction rule with a negative likelihood ratio of 0.14 in case of less than 2 positive tests out of 5, a positive likelihood ratio of 4.6 in case of 4 out of 5 positive tests and a positive likelihood ratio of 18.3 in case of 5 positive tests.
For this reason, the CPR has a high clinical value to confirm the presence of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
The test cluster consists of the following 5 items:
What is interesting in the study of Wainner et al. is that the common clinical tests described by the literature like the ULTTA+B, the Phalen’s test, the Tinel’s sign and strength testing of the abductor pollicis brevis all did not make it into the cluster as their validity was too low to be predictive.
Other common tests to assess Carpal Tunnel Syndrome are: