re: Ulnar Nerve Entrapment surgery---any of you know anything about this?

As far as recovery goes....it generally falls within two realms:

If it's a work comp injury, it will be a lifelong disability with the inability to work. This will lead to depression and anxiety. You'll ultimately find yourself with monthly pain management appointments that include pissing in a cup. You'll feel like you need to pretend you actually take the NSAIDs and gabapentin in order to keep the flow of benzos and opiates flowing. Every so often you'll have an "emergency" and need to find a new pain clinic because your previous one closed down or discharged you for a bad drug screens or pill counts.

For non-work comp, it's generally not a big deal at all and patient's go back to normal lives in a week or two. I would recommend not skipping out on physical therapy if the doctors recommends it though.

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If it's a work comp injury, it will be a lifelong disability with the inability to work. This will lead to depression and anxiety. You'll ultimately find yourself with monthly pain management appointments that include pissing in a cup. You'll feel like you need to pretend you actually take the NSAIDs and gabapentin in order to keep the flow of benzos and opiates flowing. Every so often you'll have an "emergency" and need to find a new pain clinic because your previous one closed down or discharged you for a bad drug screens or pill counts.

For non-work comp, it's generally not a big deal at all and patient's go back to normal lives in a week or two. I would recommend not skipping out on physical therapy if the doctors recommends it though.

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This is dead on. Seent it a million times.

OP i'll add a few things:

If I had this problem, especially with the numbness that's continuous and the muscle weakness, I'd get it fixed yesterday.

I would also opt for the traditional open procedure, rather than any endoscopic or limited incision approach.

Lastly, I'd see a hand or upper extremity specialist, not just a general orthopaedic, neurosurgeon, or plastic surgeon (I've seen all three perform this operation).

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Ulnar Nerve Entrapment

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I had this once. I saw a hand specialist and he set me up with his occupational therapist who gave me about 10 different stretching exercises to stretch the ulnar nerve. All of them were kinda of strange. I was suppose to do them every hour of the day. She stressed the importance of this. This was very aggressive treatment. I had numbness for 7 days already and they were worried about permanent nerve damage. So I set a bunch of alarm clocks on my I-Phone and I did the stretches every hour. I got a massage every other day. It was a 45 minute massage just on my affected hand, wrist, forearm, arm, and shoulder to help with the entraped nerve. I saw the occupational therapist twice a week for more exercises and rehab. In a little over 2 weeks all of my numbness and tingling had disappeared. I was lucky and did not need surgery.


The thing that shocked me the most was the weakness I had in my left arm that I did not even know about. There was a huge difference in my grip strengths for each hand. I was shocked and really embarrassed that I was that weak. But after each visit to the therapist my strength was returning and by the last day my grip strength was almost equal to my dominant arm.

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Plus not feeling any pain would be a cool party trick.

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If I had this problem, especially with the numbness that's continuous and the muscle weakness, I'd get it fixed yesterday.

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I am now, but this kinda pisses me off. My GP was pretty nonchalant about it--said a little PT and dry needling would fix me right up. After reading about it, my instincts told me surgery was inevitable. I asked every PT that worked on me straight up--"Does PT work for this injury?" Most hemmed and hawed and aw-shucksed a "sometimes." Cause I was like, "I don't want to go through all this for months and then still have to have fricking surgery and do it all again."

I finally caught a different due one day and we got to talking and said "hold up, let me check your hand( big area between forefinger and thumb) and check for atrophy." Sure enough, there's a huge invention in my hand when I relax it. I somehow had not noticed it. He stopped the session and told me to find a neurologist. So I did.


I forgot the name of the test (EMG or something). Said the shock should travel down the nerve at at least 50 m/s. My medial and other nerve were 63/64 m/s. My ulnar was 29. He was all "Yep, it's entrapped. Go see an ortho for surgery." A 5 minute visit that could have happened months ago.

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I am seeing Dr. Bowling who is in the same office. It does look pretty straightforward, I'm curious about the recovery time

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Dr Bowlin is an excellent doctor. Recovery from surgery will be 6-8 weeks. Could be 6-12 months before you see complete recovery of the nerve.

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LSU Tigershark

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I had it for a while, but no surgery. I still have numbness in my elbow. Cant feel my fingers, but I have Dupuytren's contracture as well. It's getting worse, and Doc said there was nothing to do for it