Diagnostic Test Accuracy of Provocative Maneuvers for the Diagnosis of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to summarize and evaluate the research on the accuracy of provocative maneuvers to diagnose carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). METHODS: The MEDLINE, CINAHL, Cochrane, and Embase databases were searched, and studies that assessed the diagnostic accuracy of at least 1 provocative test for CTS were selected. Study characteristics and data about the diagnostic accuracy of the provocative tests for CTS were extracted. A random-effects meta-analysis of the sensitivity (Sn) and specificity (Sp) of the Phalen test and Tinel sign was conducted. The risk of bias (ROB) was rated using the QUADAS-2 tool. RESULTS: Thirty-one studies that assessed 12 provocative maneuvers were included. The Phalen test and the Tinel sign were the 2 most assessed tests (in 22 and 20 studies, respectively). The ROB was unclear or low in 20 studies, and at least 1 item was rated as having high ROB in 11 studies. Based on a meta-analysis of 7 studies (604 patients), the Phalen test had a pooled Sn of 0.57 (95% CI = 0.44-0.68; range = 0.12-0.92) and a pooled Sp of 0.67 (95% CI = 0.52-0.79; range = 0.30-0.95). For the Tinel sign (7 studies, 748 patients), the pooled Sn was 0.45 (95% CI = 0.34-0.57; range = 0.17-0.97) and the pooled Sp was 0.78 (95% CI = 0.60-0.89; range = 0.40-0.92). Other provocative maneuvers were less frequently studied and had conflicting diagnostic accuracies. CONCLUSION: Meta-analyses are imprecise but suggest that the Phalen test has moderate Sn and Sp, whereas the Tinel test has low Sn and high Sp. Clinicians should combine provocative maneuvers with sensorimotor tests, hand diagrams, and diagnostic questionnaires to achieve better overall diagnostic accuracy rather than relying on individual clinical tests. IMPACT: Evidence of unclear and high ROB do not support the use of any single provocative maneuver for the diagnosis of CTS. Clinicians should consider a combination of noninvasive clinical diagnostic tests as the first choice for the diagnosis of CTS.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.012 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it