Resources
Hand and wrist treatment
A journal article Nerve Decompression at the Wrist in Patients with Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease by Drs. Chalekson, Brown, Gelber and Haws published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Sept. 1999 pages 999-1002 could help some of us having hand and wrist problems. Dr. Richard E. Brown of Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, who is one of our longtime advisors, and his colleagues looked at five people with CMT who all had a variety of hand and wrist problems including burning, tingling and pain, weakness and a lessening ability to feel and to move the hand.
While many people with CMT have these problems, they can be made worse by nerve entrapment such as carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) occurring at the same time, and it can be very difficult to diagnose nerve entrapment in people who already have CMT.
The paper records that a majority of the five patients improved clinically after nerve release procedures were done and, even more importantly to us, a majority of the patients (63%) had sustained relief of numbness, tingling and pain.
The authors point out that when careful evaluation of both clinical signs and symptoms and nerve conduction information is obtained before surgery, and patients carefully selected, moderate to substantial relief can often be obtained.

The following item is from Gregory T. Carter, MD, Medical Director, Providence Rehabilitation Hospital, Chehalis, Washington.
Posterior Interosseus Nerve Entrapment in the Presence of Hereditary Motor and Sensory Neuropathy, Type I
To briefly summarize in layman's terms the above journal article - I saw a 30-year-old gentleman who presented with a several-year history of painless progressive distal weakness. Physical exam showed symmetrically diminished reflexes and significant limb weakness. However, in the left upper arm only there was marked radial deviation of the wrist on extension, with extreme weakness in the finger and thumb extensors. He had a family history of CMT (HMSN type I) and was told by several other physicians that this represented an asymmetrical presentation of the disease. I saw him in consultation with performed nerve conduction studies, which the diagnosis of CMT. However, needle EMG studies revealed fibrillations limited to the left extensor carpi ulnaris and extensor indicis proprius. Forearm and elbow radiographs were normal and he was referred for surgical exploration. At surgery, the posterior interosseus nerve was found to be compressed at exit from the supinator muscle, with formation of large neuroma (nerve tumor) at that point. This case demonstrates the importance of considering a concomitant (accompanying) focal neuropathy in cases of hereditary neuropathy with asymmetric presentation.

Linda here: If you didn't quite get that, the good doctor is saying that this gentleman had what looked like an asymmetrical presentation of CMT, one side more affected than the other, when, in fact, he had a compressed nerve in that arm that was released through surgery and he now does not have the symptoms that led doctors to believe he was presenting asymmetrical CMT although he still has CMT.
Be careful that you or your doctor doesn't always look to CMT for what is behind your symptoms, it could be something else, and in this case, it was!