Nerve injuries often result from damage to the spine or joints, leading to conditions like nerve root impingement. Symptoms can include radiating pain, numbness, and tingling in the limbs. Immediate medical attention is crucial to prevent long-term complications such as drop foot or chronic regional pain syndrome.
Nerve root impingement occurs when a herniated disc or injury compresses a nerve in the spine, causing pain, numbness, or tingling that radiates into the limbs.
Symptoms of chronic regional pain syndrome include severe, burning pain that is disproportionate to the initial injury, along with swelling and changes in skin color or temperature.
Treatment for nerve injuries may involve medication, physical therapy, or surgical intervention to relieve pressure on the nerve and restore function.
We've talked about joint injuries, we've talked about cervical injuries, we've talked about neck injuries, we've been talking about lumbar or low back injuries. Well, one of the offshoots from damage to a joint or the neck or spine is a nerve injury. And typically what we see is nerve root impingement. Now injuries can be so severe that the nerve in and of itself is severed. And the more common type of injury we see is nerve root impingement. You know, when people have low back injuries and they have pain that radiates into their legs or into their feet or they feel numbness and tingling in their legs or they have pain in their buttocks or the hips, that's nerve root impingement. That's where you've had an injury to the spine or to the disc itself and the disc is herniated now and it's pressing on or impinging that nerve, that's what causes what we call radicular pain or pain in the legs and the numbness and tingling in the feet. It also happens in the neck. If you've had a car accident or you've had severe whiplash and you've sustained trauma or damage to the neck, you can herniate a disc in the neck and it can impinge the nerve. And then what happens is you have pain that radiates down the shoulder, down the arm, you have numbness and tingling in your fingers. I've had people describe it as being shocked by cattle prod, that they feel like electricity running down their arms into their fingers. And that is a nerve injury. Now you've had structural injury, that is you've got damage to the neck, damage to the disc, damage to the low back, but the spin-off or the offshoot from that is you've got nerve impingement. In those cases require immediate medical care and it's got to get to the appropriate surgeon, the appropriate spinal orthopedic surgeon or a neurosurgeon to remove that disc and remove that impingement to the nerve. If you don't and if you have long-term nerve impingement, you can develop long-term complications. One of the more common that we see is where a person has long-term low back nerve root impingement and they develop what we call drop foot. And that is there's so much damage to the foot itself that the foot won't raise and lower, it won't flex anymore, it's almost like the foot is dead and that's called drop foot. Now one of the other injuries I wanna talk about as far as nerve injuries, it's not that common, but throughout my career I've probably handled a dozen or two dozen of these type cases. And this is called chronic regional pain syndrome or used to be called reflex sympathetic dystrophy. These are injuries to the parasympathetic nervous system. And the parasympathetic nervous system is the nerves that we cannot control, it's what makes us breathe, it's what makes us blink our eyes, it's called the parasympathetic nervous system. Well what happens when you have suffered an injury like this, you develop a condition called chronic regional pain syndrome, there's type one, type two and type three. And like I said, this used to be called reflex sympathetic dystrophy and this has been around or really was really brought to the forefront I should say during the Civil War. Soldiers would be shot, they'd have a bullet wound, the doctor would treat the bullet wound, the bullet wound would heal, but the person would have horrible, horrible pain. And they couldn't understand why because the injury in and of itself wasn't that severe, but the pain was out of proportion to the injury. And that is a common issue with reflex sympathetic dystrophy or chronic regional pain syndrome. The injury may not be that severe on the face, but yet this person has pain that is just uncontrollable. They describe it as burning and feeling like their limb or their finger or their foot is on fire. And that is chronic regional pain syndrome or reflex sympathetic dystrophy. A recent case that I just had involved a lady who worked for a doctor, she was actually the doctor's accountant and office manager. They were moving a filing cabinet and as they were moving the filing cabinet, the door slid open and then she moved her hand and the door slammed forward hitting her hand and breaking two of her fingers. Well, she went to the doctor, they set the fingers, the brakes healed, but this lady could not, the pain was unbelievable. They could not understand why for an injury that yes, was severe, but not devastating, that her pain response was so out of proportion. Well, fortunately for her when she came to me to talk to me about it, I had worked with several experts throughout North Alabama and Southern Tennessee who had had training in chronic regional pain syndrome and reflex sympathetic dystrophy. I got her to one of the leading experts for these type of diseases, which is located in Huntsville, and he went through what they call the Budapest protocol, which is a 10 step testing that helps determine whether or not a person has indeed suffering from chronic regional pain syndrome. Come to find out, that is exactly what she had. And we were able through the testimony of that doctor to present that to the judge in a workers compensation case. And we were able to assist her in getting treatment and also providing her with an income for life as she would no longer be able to work.
