At most, this is a new finding to watch for in future research. This study has problems; details are below.
The authors report that in 119 patients with clinically diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome seen by a single surgeon and 109 controls recruited from a church, the Scratch Collapse test was able to distinguish carpal tunnel syndrome with accuracy of:
- Sensitivity 64%
- Specificity 99%
Problems with this study are:
- Use of case control design rather than a cross sectional study of consecutive patients
- No true reference standard
- Subjective interpretation of an abnormal response