De Quervain's disease: a plea for early treatment

ABSTRACT

This paper presented the results of treatment in 109 patients with 113 wrists affected. They were divided randomly into two groups Group A [59 patients with 62 wrists treated surgically by slitting of the roof of the first dorsal compartment] and group B [50 patients with 51 wrists treated conservatively with local cortisone injection]. The average age was 37.8 years. Most of the patients were housewives and the duration of symptoms varied from one week to more than one year with an average of 2.6 months. Conservative method gave satisfactory results only in early cases, while surgical slitting was the best, especially in late cases with long standing symptoms. Diabetic patients, patients with high sedimentation rate, patients with latex test positive, and patients with longer duration of symptoms gave less satisfactory results and this was found statistically significant