Pain physician
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This a unique case of severe scapular pain following unintentional epidural space air injection during epidural steroid injection. A 70-year-old woman presented for a fluoroscopically guided C7-T1 interlaminar epidural steroid injection. Three injection attempts were made using the loss of resistance with air technique. ⋯ The authors theorize that unintentional prefilling of the epidural space with air prior to the injection of the subsequent steroid mixture added sufficient pressure to the epidural space to cause right-sided C4 nerve root stretching/entrapment and ensuing radicular pain to the right scapular border. The subsequent intravenous diazepam provided cervical muscle relaxation and facilitated foramina passage of air out of the spinal canal. This case demonstrates that under certain conditions entry of air into cervical epidural space can lead to unexpected, albeit temporary, neurological symptoms.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Effect of Adding Calcitonin to Translaminar Epidural Steroid in Degenerative Lumbar Spinal Canal Stenosis.
Spinal canal stenosis is one of the most common causes of low back pain and disability. Its management varies from surgical to conservative, and the indications for ideal management are not clearly defined. ⋯ Adding calcitonin to epidural steroid and local anesthetic injection seems to be more effective than epidural steroid and local anesthesia alone in management of spinal canal stenosis regarding increased walking distance, better Oswestry scale, diminished pain intensity and perception of paresthesia, and less analgesic consumption, all the above mentioned benefits continued up to one year. So, epidural calcitonin may be considered as a new therapeutic modality in the management of pain in spinal canal stenosis.
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The following case series describes the treatment of neuropathic pain in post-surgical scars, using adipocytes and adipose-derived stem/progenitor cells (ASCs). Two cases are described in which patients underwent lipofilling to treat painful scars after cosmetic surgery. ⋯ We found a notable long-lasting reduction in the NRS values after the "modified" lipofilling treatment. The results are promising and reinforce earlier data on the positive effect of lipofilling and pain in scars.
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Although the prevalence of sacroiliac joint (SIJ) pain is relatively high (15 - 30%), there is no unambiguous reference standard to diagnose SIJ pain. Pressure tenderness in the SIJ region is used for diagnostic purposes, but the clinimetric properties of this procedure remain to be determined. ⋯ Pressure pain algometry appears to be a reliable method to establish differences in PPTs between healthy volunteers and patients with SIJ pain. The diagnostic accuracy of this test should be investigated further.
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Pudendal neuralgia is a chronic neuropathic pelvic pain that is often misdiagnosed and inappropriately treated. The Nantes criteria provide a basis for the diagnosis of pudendal neuralgia due to pudendal nerve entrapment. The 5 essential diagnostic criteria are pain situated in the anatomical territory of the pudendal nerve, worsened by sitting, the patient is not woken at night by the pain, and no objective sensory loss is detected on clinical examination. ⋯ In these atypical presentations, the diagnosis of pain due to pudendal nerve entrapment should be reconsidered and a radiological examination should be performed. The 2 cases described in this report (tumor compression of the pudendal nerve) illustrate the need to recognize atypical pudendal neuralgia and clarify the role of pelvic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), as MRI provides very valuable information for the evaluation of diseases involving the ischiorectal fossa. The presence of red flags must be investigated in all cases of pudendal neuralgia to avoid missing pudendal neuralgia secondary to a mechanism other than nerve entrapment.