Where'd carpal tunnel go?

I was awaiting a ripe case of carpal tunnel after transcribing my husband's hours and hours of dissertation research from audio tape to computer back in 2004. Aside from tight, sore knuckles, no carpal tunnel symptoms ever arose.

Have you noticed carpal tunnel is out of the news these days? The number of overall cases has dropped 21 percent in 2006, and declined by half for workers in professional and business services from 2005 to 2006. Weird. I doubt they're typing less, especially if they're blogging.

According to this article, a 2001 Mayo Clinic study found heavy computer users (up to seven hours a day) were not any more at risk for carpal tunnel than the general population. Blue-collar workers, especially those on an assembly-line, are much more at risk than those clicking away at a keyboard. Bloggers and other keyboard-happy folk can breathe a sigh of relief -- when carpal tunnel was a buzzword during the personal computer boom of the 1990s, one theory purports it may have been overdiagnosed. Others say it's better ergonomics or an underreporting of cases.