I need help recalling a back treatment

[Sugarcoated]

My 78 year old father-in-law has pretty severe arthritis in his lower back and the side effects from the pain killers are killing him.
I read or heard about a drastic treatment for severe back pain sufferers that involves severing the sciatic nerve . . . or something like that. Does anyone know about this?

[silverweb]

1. I don't know much about it.

Ortho and Neurology are not specialties I transcribe a lot. However, I have heard about nerve ablation for back pain.

You might google "back pain + nerve ablation" and see what pops up.

[Sugarcoated]

7. Thanks I'll try that.

[Warpy]

2. Not a good idea.

Have you talked to a pain specialist about trying different medications or routes to give the medications?

Pain specialists can often tweak the medications plus combine them with non drug strategies to give chronic pain patients their lives back.

If he's not going to a pain specialist, get a referral NOW.

[Sugarcoated]

5. His health care is managed by his wife

He's had many, many health issues, he's completely sick of doctors and how, he thinks, they seem to pass him along to the next doctor and then just write him prescriptions. The weird thing is, my mother-in-law who is just heart broken to see her best friend become a different human being, when I asked for details to do a more accurate web search she got a bit short with me. It was like she was skeptical even though she sort of asked me to look for stuff on the internet. Actually, what she initially wanted me to look up (she's not very computer skilled) was a web site from an advertisement in the paper touting a different back pain procedure, when I went to the site it asked for a name and address to send the info, yet no info at the site and I couldn't find anything about it anywhere on the net.

[Celebration]

10. I wonder if it was the spinal decompression thing

They advertise this all the time.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/may/15/its-a-stretch/

I really don't know anything about it, but my guess is that it would be more appropriate for disc problems than arthritis. Plus it only has a few small studies done on it. A lot of the surgical procedures done don't have studies on them either, and with considerably more risk.

I am a huge fan of structural integration therapy, formerly called rolfing. But, I don't know anyone who has had it done that has severe arthritis problems.

Good luck.

[Warpy]

11. When they ask you for personal info up front

and you can't find anything about the procedure on the net, watch out! There are a lot of quacks out there who are hurting people who have serious pain and are desperate enough to go outside established treatment to relieve it.

Suggest to MIL that she get a referral to a pain specialist if surgery is out of the question or has been ineffective. Proper treatment of pain can give him his life back, and it won't all be prescriptions and a pat on the head.

[pansypoo53219]

3. massage therapy?

i had sciatica from displaced vertebra. luckily just major tingling. my chriropractor used to treat me with this electric pulse thing. wonder if that would help.

[thecrow]

4. Could you be talking about TENS?

It's a device that sends an electric pulse to counteract the pain impulse or something like that.
Other than that is there some kind of exercise he can do to relieve the pain?
I had an acting up sciatic nerve earlier this year (a real pain when driving!) and I tried to make myself more active and it worked itself out. I realize this may not be an option for him.
Good luck in solving this! I hope he gets relief FAST!

[Sugarcoated]

6. That was one of the treatments I read about

thanks so much. But there's another, I think which involves severing the nerve. I can't seem to find anything about it when I google it.

He's got many health problems and doesn't get around good these days so exercise probably isn't the thing. He's going down that hill where the problems snowball, can't get around very well so he moves and walks less which leads to atrophy which leads to falling which leads to even less movement and pain meds which leads to a fuzzy head which leads to more falling, etc. He's not there yet, but all this leads eventually to being bed ridden, then pneumonia. I saw it happen to my mom and it's just horrible. But if we could get his back pain lessened and off the perkiset (I think what he's on) it would improve his quality of life so much.

[bdf]

8. Has he tried alternative (but illegal) painkillers?

There are people with chronic pain who have found that opiate-based painkillers either do nothing for them or they hate the side-effects. Some of those have found that cannabis can kill pains that opiates do not reach. The side-effects differ from opiates too—you tend to laugh a lot and get the munchies.

[LeftishBrit]

9. There are treatments for some forms of back and leg pain that involve surgical decompression of

nerves in the spine.

My mother had that done for severe sciatica.

However, I don't think it's done for arthritis as such, but for stenosis (narrowing) of the space containing the nerve.

It's also possible to have nerve blocks; but I haven't heard of nerves being severed, except in accidents with bad results.

There may be better pain-killers.

Has your father in law seen a rheumatologist or an orthopaedic specialist?

I do hope he's feeling better soon.