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.