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The sciatic nerve extends from the lower back through each buttock, and down your legs to your feet. Damage to the nerve or compression in the lower back is called lumbar radiculopathy, but most people know the condition better as sciatica.
The National Center for Health Statistics estimates that 30% of American adults suffer from lower back pain, and around 10% of those have sciatica. That means between seven and eight million people across the United States are struggling with sciatica at any given time.
Sciatica is undoubtedly one of the most common back conditions we see at the Silver Spine & Neurological Center offices in Sherman, Greenville, and McKinney, Texas. It develops when something in your lumbar (lower) spine presses on the sciatic nerve.
Frequent culprits are bulging or herniated intervertebral discs, arthritic changes like thickened ligaments and bone spurs, and inflamed tissues. Sciatica usually affects one side of the body, but it can affect both.
Take a moment to discover if your lower back pain could be sciatica and how to reduce or eliminate your symptoms.
Here are the top five sciatica symptoms, ranked in order of how likely you are to experience them.
The primary sciatica symptom is, unsurprisingly, pain. This pain can be pretty distinctive because it typically shoots down one leg from the lower back through the buttock. It can often be worse in the pelvis and leg than in the back itself.
People with sciatica often describe the pain as burning or electric-shock-like. It can radiate from the injured area into other parts of the leg and back and is frequently excruciating when coughing or sneezing. The pain may also peak if you bend or lift your legs upward while on your back.
Paresthesia is a tingling sensation. It’s similar to the feeling of “pins-and-needles” you get when your limbs wake up after going numb. However, when you have sciatica, you feel the tingling without your limbs having gone to sleep. Paresthesia can also cause burning or prickling sensations.
When you go numb, you can feel little-to-no sensation in the affected limb. Numbness often occurs alongside paresthesia.
Pain, numbness, and paresthesia occur because the nerves can’t function properly. More severe nerve compression or damage could cause muscle weakness and problems getting your legs to work properly.
Very few people with sciatica have such severe cases that they develop incontinence. However, if the nerve is very badly damaged, it could affect your bladder and/or bowel control.
While sciatica is the likeliest cause of these symptoms, they can also be due to other conditions, like piriformis syndrome. This disorder also involves nerve compression, but it occurs in the buttock’s piriformis muscle rather than in the spine.
If you recognize some or all of these sciatica symptoms, schedule a consultation with us so we can evaluate your condition. Our skilled pain specialists complete a physical exam, view your medical history, and discuss your symptoms. They might send you for an X-ray or other diagnostic imaging procedure to pinpoint the sciatica’s cause and severity.
Once we’ve diagnosed your condition, we prescribe the appropriate treatment. In most cases, rest and conservative therapies like cold compresses will sort sciatica symptoms out in a few weeks.
You might benefit from physical therapy and/or chiropractic manipulations if your symptoms don’t improve. Patients with persistent sciatica might require steroid injections into the spine. Steroid medication is a powerful anti-inflammatory that can have long-lasting effects.
Most people find these treatments highly effective and don’t need surgery, but for those who do, we offer several same-day outpatient procedures using minimally invasive techniques. For example, we might perform a microdiscectomy to remove the part of a disc that’s pressing on the sciatic nerve.
Dr. Silver is a double board-certified neurosurgeon with over 20 years of experience in interventional pain management and outpatient spinal surgeries, so you’ll be in good hands. To get relief from sciatica symptoms, call the Silver Spine & Neurological Center office nearest you to arrange an evaluation, or use the online booking form to contact us.