My wife had a varicose vein operation 11 years ago. Unfortunately, following the surgery it is generally accepted that her femoral arterial nerve was trapped. this has caused her to be in a chronic pain situation since this time.
She has tried many different drugs and procedures however she is still in no better a position than the first day following the original operation. Even oramorph does not facilitate any assistance with the pain in her groin.
We are at a loss as to what we can really do to help her. My wife is still fit and active at the age of 80!!
Any suggestions of help and/or guidance would be warmly received.
i am just curious about the statement that it is 'generally accepted' that the femoral nerve is "trapped"?? just HOW did they actually determine that for certain? have they ever actually even done whats called an "EMG/NCV" test on that leg to really see if that nerve flow is being impaired or are they giving this whats called the old 'educated guess' type of Dx?
just what does that whole leg actually look like? any different than the opposite one? what are her 'exact" types of symptoms and just how does her pain feel to her or how does she describe it? any actual swelling going on or a real temp change from one leg vs the other? just knowing if they actually did that EMG on her to test that particular nerve espescially, would help to know. if any nerve is impinged or flow is impaired in any way, that one EMG type of test would actually show it with flow velocitys that are too low or even non existant. Marcia
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3-22-01,herniated C-6-7
11-20-01,placement of hardware for failed fusion
9-22-03,removal of cavernous hemangioma that was inside spinal cord. Neuro damage to L hand L leg and R leg.
I had an entrapped nerve in the inguinal area following a hysterectomy. The only way they could discover that a nerve was trapped in the incision area was by going in and doing exploratory surgery in order to find out what was causing the persistent pain. When they released the nerve, the level of pain slowly but surely diminished. I also took Lyrica to control the nerve pain until they could schedule the surgery and diagnose the problem. I have the same questions that others do which was, how has the problem been determined to be nerve entrappment? If they are certain as to the diagnosis is there a surgical fix as there was in my case? In the meantime what about some medication to decrease nerve pain? Several options here include, Lyrica, Neurontin (cheaper) and some docs say Ultram helps here as well. Hope this is helpful. Lisa
DearFeel bad.
Thank you so very much for your reply, to my wife's problem, could you please say what an "EMG/NCV" is, as we would like to ask our doctor on our next visit. My wife will write you more details when she has a "Good Day".
God Bless.
A Fishhead.
Dear CaliGirl.
Thank you so very much for your reply and information, we will ask our doctor about
Lyrica,Neurontin,Ultram, your imput has been very helpful,my wife is feeling better,just knowing that some one else has the same problems and is fighting it,Drusilla will contact you herself when she has a good day.
God bless AFish head.
EMG is an Electromeylogram. Not the most pleasant test in the world, but it's the only way to surely tell if there is nerve connectivity and if there is permanent nerve damage.
And the other med that wasn't mentioned is Topomax. All of htese meds are used for nerve pain control even though that wasn't their primary use. If your wife hasn't tried using one of them, she should. They will conrol nerve pain where other pain meds won't.
thanks ib&p, i wasn't able to get back here as quickly as i thought. she is right about that test and what it is called. this really IS about the ONLY test that truely looks at nerve flow within an actual individual nerve just to see how well the actual flow velocity is thru it. that one test should actually have already been done the minute they even suspected an impingement going on in there. this would at least show whether or not the actual nerve really IS the main issue or if just having that surgery and all that involves could actually be behind the symptoms.
the NCV part of this test is a 'nerve conduction study". this actually checks the nerve flow to the correlating muscles. if she is actually suffering reduced nerve flow to the muscles it innervates, generally the muscles would actually look somewhat atrophied(smaller?) because they just are not being utilized to their fullest extent. considering what you were "told' about that one nerve, this would be the ideal way to fully check this out and just see how that overall nerve flow is. its just a really needed test for what she supposedly has been Dxed with.
i would seriously speak with her doc about referring her for this before anything else gets done. you simply cannot treat in the very best ways what you don;t really know for certain you have wrong, ya know what i mean?if you could just answer the questions about how her leg actually 'looks' that i asked in the first post it would really be helpful. marcia
__________________
3-22-01,herniated C-6-7
11-20-01,placement of hardware for failed fusion
9-22-03,removal of cavernous hemangioma that was inside spinal cord. Neuro damage to L hand L leg and R leg.
