Persistent Tennis Elbow Symptoms Have Little Prognostic Value: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: Tennis elbow is a common painful enthesopathy of the lateral elbow that limits upper limb function and frequently results in lost time at work. Surgeons often recommend surgery if symptoms persist despite nonsurgical management, but operations for tennis elbow are inconsistent in their efficacy, and what we know about those operations often derives from observational studies that assume the condition does not continue to improve over time. This assumption is largely untested, and it may not be true; meta-analyzing results from the control arms of tennis elbow studies can help us to evaluate this premise, but to our knowledge, this has not been done.

Structural validity of the Boston Carpal Tunnel Questionnaire and its short version, the 6-Item CTS symptoms scale: a Rasch analysis one year after surgery.

Background: The Boston Carpal Tunnel Questionnaire (BCTQ) and its shorter version, the Six-Item Carpal Tunnel Symptoms Scale (CTS-6), are widely used for assessing function and/or symptoms in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome. This study examined the structural validity of the BCTQ and CTS-6 among patients who had undergone surgery for treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Methods: The data for this cross-sectional analysis were obtained from 217 adult patients who had undergone carpal tunnel release surgery 1 year earlier.