Some Information About Radicular Pain

Radicular Pain, or Radiculitis, is pain "radiated" along the dermatome (sensory distribution) of a nerve due to inflammation or other irritation of the nerve root (Radiculopathy) at its connection to the spinal column. A common form of radiculitis is sciatica, or radicular pain that radiates along the sciatic nerve from the lower spine to the lower back, gluteal muscles, back of the upper thigh, calf, and foot as often secondary to nerve root irritation from a spinal disc herniation or from osteophytes in the lumbar region of the spine.

Radicular pain can be described as sciatica which is usually deep and steady and gets reproduced by various activities and positions like walking and sitting. This type of pain is accompanied with tingling, numbness, muscle weakness and loss of specific reflexes.

This type of pain is found in the legs due to sciatic nerve. Radicular muscle pain also gets radiated in to the extreme low covering thighs, calf and foot. Radicular muscle pain is caused due to the compression of certain higher lumbar nerve roots. Sciatica is one of the most common symptom of radicular muscle pain and is caused due to the compression of a spinal nerve in the low back. Radicular muscle pain is often referred as radiculopathy.

Treatment of Radicular Pain

Usually conservative treatment is applied for curing this type of muscle pain including physical therapy, medications, spinal injections and others. This treatment is conducted for six to eight months. If this treatment gets unsuccessful than decompression surgery like laminectomy and disectomy are mainly recommended. This surgery has a successful percentage of around 85 % to 90 %. Back surgery is also useful for getting relief from radicular muscle pain. However, if nerve compression is not shown in MRI or CT scan than back surgery is not advised as it would be an unsuccessful one.