Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most frequently encountered mononeuropathy in clinical practice. Although now a well–recognized entity, it took almost 100 years from the initial observations until the pathophysiology of the disorder was finally accepted as a median nerve compression at the wrist.
Sir James Paget (1854)1 was the first to describe the clinical features of CTS. His first patient was a man who developed pain and impaired sensation in the hand from the trauma of a cord drawn tightly around his wrist. In a second case, a tardy median nerve palsy was a consequence of a distal radius fracture; this patient improved with wrist immobilization and thus was also the first description of treatment with a neutral wrist splint, a method still in use today: