Dr. Rob Riley joins us each week from the South Bend Clinic. Here are his responses from August 20th.
Lena: I would like to know with all the medical advances, why can’t they fix the sciatic nerve? I have suffered with this for years.
Unfortunately, the truth is we’re not very good at fixing any nerves and it’s an area of ongoing research. The sciatic nerve starts with nerves in the lower back which go down through the muscles of the buttocks and proceed down the leg. People with sciatica can experience pain anywhere along this path. The problem is pressure on the nerve somewhere along the way. It can be from a disc in the back, narrowing of the spinal canal, narrowing of the opening where the nerve comes out of the spinal canal, or pressure from the muscles it goes through in the buttocks area. Fortunately, most people get better with time and the use of anti-inflammatory medications and perhaps physical therapy. If that’s not working, we’ll often do advanced imaging studies like MRI to try to figure out just where the nerves are being pinched. In those cases, sometimes surgery is necessary to relieve the pressure on the nerve and reduce the pain.
Unfortunately, the truth is we’re not very good at fixing any nerves and it’s an area of ongoing research. The sciatic nerve starts with nerves in the lower back which go down through the muscles of the buttocks and proceed down the leg. People with sciatica can experience pain anywhere along this path. The problem is pressure on the nerve somewhere along the way. It can be from a disc in the back, narrowing of the spinal canal, narrowing of the opening where the nerve comes out of the spinal canal, or pressure from the muscles it goes through in the buttocks area. Fortunately, most people get better with time and the use of anti-inflammatory medications and perhaps physical therapy. If that’s not working, we’ll often do advanced imaging studies like MRI to try to figure out just where the nerves are being pinched. In those cases, sometimes surgery is necessary to relieve the pressure on the nerve and reduce the pain.
