Background:The present study determines the association of obesity, gender, age and occupation in patients with carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) in a New Zealand population. Methods: Analysis of questionnaires and clinical review of patients who had undergone surgical decompression of the median nerve in the carpal tunnel. Results: The age and gender distribution of 655 hands (512 patients) that had undergone carpal tunnel release (CTR) were compared with the age and gender distribution of the New Zealand population. The results indicate that the 3-year-period prevalence of CTS in females is more than double that in males. Proportionally there were more patients over age 55 than in the general population. The findings also indicate that, proportionally, six times the number of females who worked in moderate manual work underwent CTR compared with the general female population and proportionally twice the number of males who worked in heavy office/clerical work underwent CTR compared with the general male population. It was also found that CTR patients are twice as likely to be overweight (body mass index [BMI] > 25) than the general population and female patients are twice as likely to be obese (BMI > 30) than the general population. Conclusions: Carpal tunnel syndrome is more than twice as common in females as it is in males, and patients aged more than 55 years are more likely to suffer from CTS. Females with CTS are more likely to work in moderate manual work and males with CTS are more likely to work in heavy office/clerical work. Obesity and CTS are related statistically.

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There is evidence for the use of prostheses from the times of the ancient Egyptians. Prostheses were developed for function, cosmetic appearance and a psycho-spiritual sense of wholeness. Amputation was often feared more than death in some cultures. It was believed that it not only affected the amputee on earth, but also in the afterlife. The ablated limbs were buried and then disinterred and reburied at the time of the amputee's death so the amputee could be whole for eternal life. One of the earliest examples comes from the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep II in the fifteenth century bc. A mummy in the Cairo Museum has clearly had the great toe of the right foot amputated and replaced with a prosthesis manufactured from leather and wood. The first true rehabilitation aids that could be recognized as prostheses were made during the civilizations of Greece and Rome. During the Dark Ages prostheses for battle and hiding deformity were heavy, crude devices made of available materials - wood, metal and leather. Such were the materials available to Ambroise Paré who invented both upper-limb and lower-limb prostheses. His 'Le Petit Lorrain', a mechanical hand operated by catches and springs, was worn by a French Army captain in battle. Subsequent refinements in medicine, surgery and prosthetic science greatly improved amputation surgery and the function of prostheses. What began as a modified crutch with a wooden or leather cup and progressed through many metamorphoses has now developed into a highly sophisticated prosthetic limb made of space-age materials.