I've been researching dorsal wrist ganglion cysts and trying to find more information on treatment outcomes, both in terms of recurrence and incidence of complications. I found a good review article, but unfortunately I can only see the abstracts for most of its references.
My main question:
The rates for spontaneous resolution and recurrence after treatment with aspiration both appear to be near 50% (with a pretty wide variability of reported outcomes.) This suggests that it may be difficult to tell the difference between a ganglion that would've resolved on its own vs. one that was was only resolved due to aspiration. Are there any studies that attempt to address this?
Related questions:
Is there any information on the reported duration of ganglion cysts in the case that they do spontaneously resolve? I imagine this is complicated by lack of follow-up by patients when the problem goes away.
Are there any reported complications due to aspiration of dorsal ganglion cysts? I found a reference to a 5% complication rate in a referenced article from the survey (abstract here), but this was for palmar ganglia. Lacking more specific data, are there known complications for aspiration procedures in general?
