Post-operative pain control is paramount to all operative procedures and involves several
modalities. Both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical measures are frequently used.
Carpal tunnel release (CTR) surgery is one of the most common surgeries performed in the
U.S. with over 400,000 procedures per year.2 Frequently, ice is used as a treatment
modality following surgical CTR.3 Several products have been developed in the past
decades to improve ice therapy in the rehabilitation period. One such product is the
Polar Care which provides up to 6-8 hours of continuous icing.
While there is good data supporting the use of cooling therapy (ice) for post-operative
pain, there is lack of data surrounding the use of continuous cooling therapy machines
such as the PolarCare following carpal tunnel release (CTR). The two papers that
evaluated the efficacy of continuous cooling therapy following CTR had conflicting
results on any added benefit of continuous cooling therapy over traditional icing.
There is no standard of care for post-operative icing at UCMC following CTR. Clinicians
currently decide whether to give patients a PolarCare machine on the day of surgery
without any algorithm. All other patients are encouraged to use traditional icing
methods. This study seeks to perform an appropriately-powered study to evaluate any
clinical difference between continuous cooling therapy and traditional ice for treatment
of post-operative pain in open CTR surgery.
The investigators hypothesize that participants receiving continuous cooling therapy will
have a statistically significantly lower pain score compared to those receiving
traditional ice therapy.
