Hey everyone, welcome back to Clinical Physio with me, Khalid Megan. In today's video, we're going to be taking you through Reverse Phalen's test, and this test is designed to see whether or not our patient presents with carpal tunnel syndrome, so...

What is carpal tunnel syndrome all about? Well, the carpal tunnel is the space between the carpal bones of the wrist joint and an arch-like structure called the flexor retinaculum, which sits over the top. The space in between these structures is where the median nerve

runs from the elbow down towards and into the hand. Now, the relevance of this is that if the flexor retinaculum compresses down on the median nerve, it can generate irritable symptoms in our patient's hands, which we'll go through in a second. This presentation, however, is

what is called carpal tunnel. So, how do we go through this test? Well, we're going to ask our patient to have their hands together in a prayer-like position. We're going to ask them to keep their elbows where they are, but we're going to ask

them to bring their hands downwards towards their stomach. In this position, we're going to ask them to hold it for a good 30 seconds to a minute. What we want to make sure here is that our patient holds the very lower part, or the very proximal part, of the palms of

their hands together, and we hold this position. If our patient, therefore, complains of either pain, pins and needles, or numbness in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and lateral half of the 4th digit, then this is a positive outcome.

For carpal tunnel syndrome, thank you very much. So, do we like this test? Yes, we use it a lot in clinical practice, and it can be used alongside other tests such as Tinel's test for the carpal tunnel and Phalen's test for the

carpal tunnel, in order to diagnose carpal tunnel syndrome. One thing to just make sure of during your testing, as we said, is that when our patient is in this position, they'll sometimes want to relieve the pressure by separating the proximal part of the palm of their hands

and this will essentially make the test unreliable and ineffective. So make sure that the hands are together when doing so.

Reverse Phalens Test for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome | Clinical Physio

Reverse Phalens Test for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome | Clinical Physio