THERMOGRAPHY ACCURACY IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME.

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of thermography for diagnosing carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) compared to electroneuromyography (ENMG), considered the gold standard, in patients with an indication for surgical treatment recruited from the neurosurgery outpatient clinic of the Irmandade da Santa Casa de Londrina.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional, descriptive diagnostic accuracy study, oriented by the Guideline for Reporting Reliability and Agreement Studies (GRAAS), with a sample from the database of the project "Clinical-functional characterization and evaluation of the treatment efficacy of patients with carpal tunnel syndrome" of 44 patients, both genders, divided into a study group with 17 participants and a control group with 27 participants. A FLIR® T540 camera was used to capture the thermographic images. The data was acquired and analyzed using FLIR Tools+ software, which measured the average temperature of the region of interest. Artificial Neural Networks were used to classify the thermographic images.

Results: In terms of the area under the curve was 0.908, the precision obtained was 90.81%, the accuracy 91.66%, the sensitivity 87.25% and the specificity 94.44%. The F1-score was 88.99%.

Conclusion: The main findings, such as the sensitivity and specificity values, showed significant results indicating that thermography is effective in detecting CTS. Level of Evidence I; Diagnostic studies - Investigating a Diagnostic Test.