Entrapment of middle cluneal nerves as an unknown cause of low back pain
Seven articles on PainSci cite Aota 2016: 1. Massage Therapy for Low Back Pain (So Low That It’s Not In the Back) 2. The Complete Guide to Trigger Points & Myofascial Pain 3. How to Treat Sciatic Nerve Pain 4. The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain 5. Your Back Is Not Out of Alignment 6. 35 Surprising Causes of Pain 7. Does Fascia Matter?
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
Entrapment of middle cluneal nerves induces low back pain and leg symptoms. The middle cluneal nerves can become spontaneously entrapped where this nerve pass under the long posterior sacroiliac ligament. A case of severe low back pain, which was completely treated by release of the middle cluneal nerve, was presented. Entrapment of middle cluneal nerves is possibly underdiagnosed cause of low-back and/or leg symptoms. Spinal surgeons should be aware of this clinical entity and avoid unnecessary spinal surgeries and sacroiliac fusion. This paper is to draw attention by pain clinicians in this unrecognized etiology.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Inciting events associated with lumbar disc herniation. Suri 2010 Spine J.
- Prediction of an extruded fragment in lumbar disc patients from clinical presentations. Pople 1994 Spine (Phila Pa 1976).
- Characteristics of patients with low back and leg pain seeking treatment in primary care: baseline results from the ATLAS cohort study. Konstantinou 2015 BMC Musculoskelet Disord.
- Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial. Kuyken 2022 Evid Based Ment Health.
- No long-term effects after a three-week open-label placebo treatment for chronic low back pain: a three-year follow-up of a randomized controlled trial. Kleine-Borgmann 2022 Pain.