Background & aim: Carpal tunnel syndrome is the entrapment of the median nerve in carpal tunnel of the wrist. Symptoms of this syndrome are numbness, tingling, weakness or pain in the fingers and wrist. Treatment includes rest, avoiding the many activities available, splints, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, oral steroids, steroid injection in wrist and surgery. This study compared the effects of oral prednisolone and naproxen (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) in the treatment of mild to moderate carpal tunnel syndrome.

Methods: In the present clinical-trial study, 44 patients who had mild to moderate carpal tunnel syndrome were selected and randomly assigned into two treatment groups: group 1(n = 22) received naproxen 1000 mg daily for 4 weeks and the group 2 (n = 22) received oral prednisolone 20 mg, daily, in the first 2 weeks and 10 mg daily for 2 weeks. The 3 persons of the second group dropped out of treatment. Re-evaluation of treatment outcome was performed 2 months later. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS software. To describe the data, frequency tables were used. Furthermore, the Chi-square test was used to analyze the data.

Results: 36(87.8%) of the patients were males and 12.2% were females. The electro diagnostic studies were shown 16 hands (19.5%) normal, 19 hands (23.2%) had mild and 47 (57.3%) had moderate involvement in beginning of treatment. Tingling fingers and pain in the prednisolone group had significantly lower rate than naproxen group (p< 0.05), but the symptoms were not significantly different in the two groups.

Conclusion: The effects of treatments, relief of symptoms and the decrease intensity of carpal tunnel syndrome in patients who received prednisolone were more than naproxen.