Have you ever bent down to pick something up, only to feel a sharp pain shoot from your lower back into your leg? You may wonder if it’s sciatica. Or maybe you’ve felt a burning, stinging sensation in your hand and wondered if you have a pinched nerve.
More importantly, you want to know how to make the pain stop.
Although people often use the terms sciatica and pinched nerve interchangeably, they aren’t the same. At Pain Medicine Group, our team of interventional pain management specialists evaluates nerve-related pain and determines whether it’s sciatica, a pinched nerve, or something else, and which interventional procedures may be best to help you find fast relief.
A pinched nerve occurs when your nerve is compressed or irritated. For example, a herniated disc, bone spur, or thickened ligament may press against a nerve and cause irritation. You may experience:
A pinched nerve can occur anywhere in your body, including your neck, lower back, wrist, or elbow, and these symptoms can occur anywhere along the nerve’s pathway. For example, a pinched nerve in your neck can cause numbness and tingling in your arm.
Sciatica, on the other hand, describes pain that follows the pathway of a specific nerve: your sciatic nerve. This nerve runs from your lower back branches through your buttocks and down each leg. About 40% of adults experience sciatica at some point in their life.
Sciatica often develops when this nerve becomes compressed or irritated. In other words, sciatica can result from a pinched nerve, but not every pinched nerve causes sciatica.
Treatment approaches such as rest, physical therapy, activity modifications, and medications help many people recover from sciatica, pinched nerves, and nerve compression, but what happens when the pain keeps coming back or becomes too severe to manage with conservative treatment?
That’s where interventional pain management may help. Instead of relying solely on oral medications, interventional procedures focus on directly treating specific nerves involved in your pain.
When you receive an epidural steroid injection, we deliver anti-inflammatory medication into the epidural space that surrounds your spinal nerves.
For example, if a herniated disc causes nerve root inflammation, an epidural injection may reduce swelling and irritation.
Some injections also include a local anesthetic that helps provide temporary relief soon after treatment. The steroid’s anti-inflammatory effects generally take longer to develop, often over several days.
This means that epidural steroid injections can provide short-term pain relief and make it easier for you to participate in physical therapy or other rehabilitation activities that promote healing and long-term relief.
A selective nerve root block can help alleviate pain, improve function, and even help with anxiety and depression related to pain.
Using imaging guidance, our team delivers medication near a specific spinal nerve root. The local anesthetic temporarily interrupts pain signals and helps us determine whether that nerve is contributing to your symptoms.
Radiofrequency ablation uses controlled heat to interrupt pain signals from selected nerves. We often use it to treat certain types of chronic neck pain or back pain arising from your spinal facet joints.
If your evaluation shows that some of your discomfort comes from arthritic facet joints rather than the sciatic nerve itself, we may recommend ablation.
Not all back pain that spreads into your buttocks or thighs comes from an irritated sciatic nerve. Sometimes the problem originates in your facet joints, the small joints that connect the bones of your spine.
Arthritis or inflammation in these joints can cause lower back pain that occasionally spreads to nearby areas and can mimic some sciatica symptoms.
Facet joint injections deliver a local anesthetic, sometimes combined with a corticosteroid, to help identify and quickly relieve pain coming from these joints.
Your sacroiliac (SI) joints connect your lower spine to your pelvis. When these joints become inflamed or irritated, they can cause lower back and buttock pain that sometimes travels into your leg.
An SI joint injection delivers medication directly into the affected joint to help confirm the source of your pain and reduce inflammation.
When sciatica or a pinched nerve makes everyday movement painful or difficult, it’s time to consider interventional treatment.
At Pain Medicine Group, we diagnose and manage nerve pain at our offices in Sarasota and Oviedo, Florida. After reviewing your symptoms and any necessary imaging, we may recommend an epidural steroid injection, selective nerve root block, or another interventional treatment.
Give us a call or request an appointment online today to learn which interventional treatment options may help you find relief and get moving again.
