Radiculopathy

Radiculopathy is another name for spinal nerve root pain (also called radicular pain). As with all varieties of nerve pain, there can be a wide range of causes and an accurate diagnosis is often difficult to achieve. Sciatica is certainly the most common form of radicular pain.

Radiculopathy

Radiculopathy Symptoms

Radicular pain can be felt in the area of the back where the nerve compression is occurring, as well as the area of the body served by the peripheral branches of that nerve root. Sharp pain in the affected area is common and radiating pain, tingling, weakness or numbness is the served area are likely. Clinical studies of pinched nerves have clearly shown that continued compression of a spinal nerve root will cause the nerve to stop signaling altogether. The result of this functional loss is numbness, not pain. Therefore, radicular pain might be severe, but should not continue long term.

Radiculopathy Causes

Radicular pain can be caused by a wide range of sources, depending on the severity and location of symptoms:

* Disease processes can damage nerve roots temporarily or permanently.

* Herniated discs can compress a nerve root, but seldom do.

* Osteophyte formation can pinch a nerve root in rare instances.

* Extreme spondylolisthesis might compress a spinal nerve root.

* Advanced scoliosis, kyphosis or lordosis might constrict a nerve root.

Most of the above conditions are diagnosed far more often than they actually occur. Sure, many people have herniated discs, for example, but these conditions are typically not symptomatic and are completely coincidental to the pain. In these cases, the diagnosed condition is being used as a sciatica scapegoat to explain otherwise idiopathic symptoms.

Radiculopathy Advice

Radicular pain is perhaps the most misdiagnosed sciatica diagnosis of all. There are so many anatomical possibilities which might create possible structural nerve compression, but virtually all of them are very rare events. The most common reason for sciatic nerve pain is not structural compression, but rather, simple ischemia of the regional area. This process will affect nerve tissue first and muscular tissue at higher levels of oxygen deprivation.

My sciatica was misdiagnosed for 18 years, as it was mistakenly blamed primarily on 2 herniated discs in my lower back (L4/L5 and L5/S1). The diagnosis made sense to me before I understood the real facts about sciatica, but the more I learned, the less I believed in the theory that these discs were actually responsible for the huge diversity of symptoms which affected me. In time, I learned enough to repudiate this false diagnosis and recover from my pain. It took me 18 years of failed sciatica treatments to make it to this point, but like the old saying goes…

“Better late than never.”

Radiculopathy to Sciatica Home
7/10/08 Revised 12/14/09