ESTIMATING PREVALENCE OF CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME AND SEVERITY USING BOSTON CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME QUESTIONNAIRE AMONG DEXTEROUS POPULATION

Objective: The study was designed to estimate the prevailing percentage of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) using Boston Carpal tunnel syndrome questionnaire (BCTSQ) in the dexterous population and to assess its severity. Study Design: This was a Cross-sectional survey. Study Settings and Participants: The study setting was Karachi where 226 Dexterous workers including; musicians, typist, dentists, butchers office workers, working for more than 1 year were recruited using non-probability convenience sampling. Outcome Measures: Boston Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Questionnaire. Results: This study enrolled 226 participants, 140 (61.9%) of which were males and 86 (38.1%) were females with mean age of 34.05±10.93. Out of the total 25 were diagnosed with CTS in which, 10 (40%) were males and 15 (60%) were females with mean age of 37.60±14.41. Hence, the prevalence of CTS among dexterous population was found to be 11.06%.                                                                            Conclusion: The results of our study revealed that CTS is a prevalent neuromuscular disorder among dexterous population. The severity level varies among the population. More epidemiological studies are required to get the approximate value to promote ergonomic awareness.

Projective and Curvature Symmetries in Non-Static Spacetimes

The aim of this thesis is to study the projective and curvature symmetries in non-static spacetimes. A study of non-static spherically symmetric, non-static plane symmetric, non-static cylindrically symmetric and special non-static axially symmetric spacetimes according to their proper curvature collineations (CCS) is given by using the rank of the 6 × 6 Riemann matrix and direct integration techniques. We consider the non-static spherically symmetric spacetimes to investigate proper CCS. It has been shown that when the above spacetimes admit proper CCS, they turn out to be static spherically symmetric and form an infinite dimensional vector space. In the non- static cases CCS are just Killing vector fields. In case of non-static plane symmetric spacetimes, it has been shown that when above spacetimes admit proper CCS, they form an infinite dimensional vector space. We consider the non-static cylindrically symmetric and special non-static axially symmetric spacetimes to study the proper CCS. It has been investigated that when above spacetimes admit proper CCS, they also form an infinite dimensional vector space. We consider the special non-static plane symmetric spacetimes to investigate proper projective collineations. Following an approach developed by G. Shabbir in [39], which basically consists of some algebraic and direct integration techniques to study proper projective collineations in the above spacetimes. It has been shown that when the above spacetimes admit proper projective collineations, they become a very special class of the spacelike or timelike versions of FRW K=0 model.