Health Organization for Pudendal Education

Hi there everyone,

This is my introduction, I had sciatic nerve decompression surgery earlier this year, now about 7 months out.
Before surgery I had severe sciatic pain down one leg as well as pelvic pain. I had an mri that showed likely sciatic nerve entrapment.
The surgery I had was laparoscopic robotic surgery.
Unfortunately post surgery i have new pain i would classify as Pudendal neuralgia as well as continuing other pains i had pre surgery.
The PN has been very distressing as it is very intense and the least helped (of all my different pains) by any pain medicines/treatments.
I would describe the pain as burning / being whipped with an electric cord.
I am going for a nerve block /pulsed radio frequency modulation to my pudendal nerve next week.
I will update on how i go and hopefully be able to share info on how it works out.
I am hopeful it will help others here also.
This is a very difficult disorder to have and I'm very grateful that this website exists.
Wishing you all healing.

Hi Seagreen,

Welcome to the forum. I'm so sorry to hear about the burning pain. That is a very typical of pn pain. So you had a laparoscopic surgery to address sciatic pain and pelvic pain? And your pn pain started right after the surgery? That's awful. Did the surgeon get close to S2 or lower? As you might gather from reading this site, nerve blocks often create a flare and, for many people, do not have even a short-term benefit. So, just know that that procedure may not have any therapeutic benefit. But, if you have a numbing agent injected, it can be useful diagnostically. A decline in pain suggests the pain is pudendal pain. (This is assuming the physician used some kind of imaging to ensure that the injection hits the pudendal nerve.) Let us know how that and the pulsed radio frequency goes.

April

Hi Seagreen,

Sorry to hear you are struggling with this pain right now. I am wondering how your pudendal neuralgia pain now is different than the pelvic pain you had before surgery. Is it possible you already had pudendal neuralgia before the sciatic nerve surgery?

What type of evaluation have you had as far as musculoskeletal anomalies that would be leading to an entrapped sciatic nerve on one side? Did they say what was entrapping your sciatic nerve? Do you have any pelvic misalignment, pelvic hyper or hypomobility, or sacroiliac joint dysfunction that could be contributing to the problem. Sometimes ligaments can be a problem if they aren't holding your pelvis stable. It's just wise to consider any of these possibilities to see if they could be the underlying problem that is causing your nerves to become irritated/entrapped. I'm just brainstorming here and remembering that for me, the ligaments were a big problem and my pelvis was unstable which was the underlying cause of the nerve entrapment.

Good luck with the PRFA.  

Violet