Hand and Upper Extremity Research Laboratory

ACL Group | PCL Group | MCL Group
Shoulder Group | Tendinitis

• Zong-Ming Li, PhD - Director
• Nancy Baker, PhD - Faculty in Occupational Therapy
• Teresa Brininger, MS
• Thomas Christophel
• Shouchen Dun, MS
• Michael Espiritu, MD
• Robert J. Goitz, MD
• Norm Gustafson - Occupational Therapist
• Wendy Gwilliam - Clinical Coordinator
• Robert Kaufmann, MD - Faculty in Orthopaedic Surgery
• Laurel Kuxhaus, MS
• Chris Ugbolue, Ph.D.

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a widely recognized debilitating compressive neuropathy that affects millions of individuals. Our research focus is to utilize multidisciplinary approaches to study carpal tunnel syndrome. In the long term, we wish to develop a comprehensive research program for the study of carpal tunnel syndrome at different levels of analyses including molecular, tissue, structure, function and rehabilitation. It is hoped that our research will ultimately help understand the etiology and foster the development of new strategies for prevention, diagnosis, evaluation, therapeutic intervention, and treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome. Current research projects are as follows:

To advance our understanding of finger coordination mechanisms, how hand disorders affect finger coordination, and how clinical treatments improve finger coordination.

To improve biomechanical evaluation of hand motor function to help provide new strategies for effective diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome and follow-up after treatment.

To elucidate the relationships among tightness of intrinsic muscles, finger joint stiffness, and carpal tunnel syndrome.

To study physiological responses of the hand during the repetitive performance of real life activities in the office and industrial environments.

To better understand the material and structural properties of the transverse carpal ligament.

To study molecular mechanisms of the flexor tenosynovial fibroblasts in response to cyclic mechanical stretching.