Results
Forty-four participants completed the study (21 wrists in short-axis and 23 wrists in long-axis groups). Two and one patients withdrew from the study due to personal reasons in the short- and long-axis groups, respectively (Figure 2). No statistically different was found in the demographic and clinical characteristics of the subjects (Table 1).
Compared with baseline, both groups showed improved SSS, FSS, and CSA at all follow-up assessments (p <0.05) (Table 2). SNCV improved at all follow-up assessments, compared to baseline values in both groups; however, the difference was statistically significant only in the long-axis group (p <0.05). The DML result suggested that there was a greater change from baseline at all time points in the long-axis group, which was noticeably, but not significantly, higher at the beginning. However, this change was statistically significant at the 6-month follow-up (p=0.001), while no obvious improvements were observed in the short-axis group (Table 2). A 2-way ANOVA was used to assess whether the overall pattern of change was greater in one group than the other (the group by time interaction). As shown in Table 2, the change was not significant for any of the parameters (p>0.5), except for DML (p=0.049). All measurements did not show significant differences between both groups, except between the 1-month SSS and FSS (short-axis > long-axis group; p = 0.031 and 0.023, respectively) (Table 2 and Figure 3). We observed a tendency towards improvement in the electrophysiological study (long-axis > short-axis groups) and CSA (short-axis > long-axis groups) at all follow-up time points (Table 2).
Although the proportion of patients who met the MCID value of the SSS and FSS scores was higher in the short-axis group than in the long-axis group at all follow-up time points, except for FSS at the 2-week follow-up; however, their intergroup difference was not statistically significant (Table 3). No patients showed obvious complications or adverse effects throughout the study. All patients denied additional medication administration or other treatments throughout the study.