Sciatic Pain

Sciatic pain frequently strikes out of the blue, causing sharp, electric-shock pain from your lower back down your leg. Without treatment from Alexis Tracy, DO, at Somerset Spine & Nerve, sciatic pain can recur and progressively worsen. Dr. Tracy completes advanced diagnostics and creates a personalized treatment plan for easing sciatic pain without surgery. If you’re ready to return to an active life free of sciatic pain, call the Medford, Oregon, office or request an appointment online today. 

What is sciatic pain?

The sciatic nerve leaves the spinal canal in your lower spine, goes through your buttocks, and down both legs. If the nerve is inflamed or damaged, you experience sciatic pain.

Sciatic pain usually begins with spinal problems in your lower back, such as:

• Herniated discs
• Spinal stenosis
• Traumatic injuries (including a fracture)
• Degenerative disc disease
• Spinal bone spurs
• Thickened ligaments
• Facet joint arthritis
• Spondylolisthesis (slipped vertebra)
• Pinched spinal nerve
• Radiculopathy (pinched nerve root)

The muscles in your buttocks can also pinch the sciatic nerve, causing sciatica. This condition is called piriformis syndrome.

What symptoms accompany sciatic pain?

Sciatic pain is commonly called sciatica, a term referring to symptoms resulting from a pinched sciatic nerve. Sciatica causes pain in your lower back; its hallmark symptom is pain radiating down one leg.

Sciatic pain in your legs may be mild to moderate, but most patients experience sudden, sharp, excruciating pain. You may also feel tingling and burning in the affected leg.

Symptoms such as numbness, muscle weakness, and loss of bladder or bowel function are red flags of a severe nerve problem requiring immediate medical attention.

How is sciatic pain treated?

The first treatment line for sciatic pain includes medication to reduce inflammation and ease your symptoms. However, physical therapy is essential.

Dr. Tracy is a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist who can guide your therapy, ensuring you get manual therapies and stretching and strengthening exercises that ease your pain and promote healing.

If conservative treatments don’t ease your pain, you’re a good candidate for the next step in treatment: interventional and regenerative medicine.

Examples of interventional and regenerative treatments include:

Nerve blocks

If you need a nerve block, your provider injects a local anesthetic that quickly stops pain signals from reaching your brain. The injection may or may not include a corticosteroid.

Epidural steroid injections

This treatment is a corticosteroid injection placed into the space surrounding the spine. As the medicine flows through the space, it surrounds nerves and nerve roots and reduces inflammation.

Radiofrequency ablation

During radiofrequency ablation, your Somerset Spine & Nerve provider uses a needle-like device to send radiofrequency energy into the nerve. The energy heats the nerve, creating a wound that blocks nerve signals.

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections

Injecting PRP, made from a sample of your blood, activates healing and decreases inflammation.

Call Somerset Spine & Nerve or book a sciatica evaluation online today.