Abstract

The literature reports the association between the CTD, specially Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS), and the tasks where the movements of the hand-arm segment are repetitive and of high frequency, especially flexion-extensional and pronation-supinational movements of the wrist, particularly if movements are effectuated with a strong and precise hold, in an incorrect position of various anatomical segments taken and maintained and with inadequate recovery breaks On 1700 the father of the Occupational Medicine, Bernardino Ramazzini, disputed on the illness of the upper limb, doing reference to the “cramp of the scribe”. Then for long time nobody disputed about these illness. The Occupational Medicine Departments for first has done that, attracted from other interests toward serious poisonings from metals, solvent, toward the pneumoconiosis or worse the asbestosis. At the end of the 1960, in the high technological growth country emerge a real epidemic of the upper limb illness from occupational repetitive trauma. The term “cumulative trauma disorders”, more common in the CTD acronym is due to the large interest of the Anglo-Saxon countries on this emergent group of illness. The first experiences concern the tasks with use of computer video and the processing of the meats. In Italy, before the National Congress of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene in Bologna in the 1995, the question appeared poorly advised or all unknown. For some time, our group has been studying the musculoskeletal conditions, associated to a work, called Cumulative Trauma Disorders (CTD), related repeated hypersolicitation and microtrauma of the upper extremity . The University of Bologna Occupational Medicine Department uses ultrasound for the study of muscle and tendon's illness due occupational cumulative trauma disorders. This paper explains why the ultrasound diagnosis is helpful and often being good to arrive alone to the exact diagnosis. We want also to emphasise that ultrasonography provides greater informations about the evolution of CTS, as well as other CTD, able to discern a tendinitis of flexors causing a compression on median nerve in the carpal tunnel.