Lumbar Radiculopathy Symptoms and Treatment

Lumbar radiculopathy is pain that radiates from your back down to your legs. The condition is also referred to as sciatica. The pain may radiate down one or both legs. It may travel down the front, back, or side of the leg. It may involve the foot and toes, or it may stop anywhere in the leg.

Lumbar radiculopathy symptoms include sharp or burning pain, numbness, tingling, or muscle weakness in the affected areas. These symptoms can be quite disabling and are responsible for more than 100 million lost days of work per year. Somewhere between 75 percent to 80 percent of adults will experience low back pain at some point in their lives, usually from muscle strain.

Risk factors for sciatica pain include:

• Smoking
• Obesity – particularly excess weight around the abdomen
• Repetitive motion, such as that found in some occupations
• Spinal disc injury
• Degeneration (aging or drying) of the disc and lumbar stenosis
• Compression fractures
• Spinal tumors

To diagnose radiculopathy, a neurosurgeon will use a combination of a complete medical history, a physical examination, and appropriate radiological imaging.

In many cases a magnetic resonance imaging scan (MRI) is indicated. Other tests may be necessary, including computed tomography (CT or CAT scan), electromyelogram (EMG), myelogram or discogram. An EMG involves inserting needles into nerves on the arms or legs, a myelogram involves contrast dye injected into the spinal column prior to X-ray, and a discogram involves inserting a needle and injecting dye into the disc.

Dr. Ahuja and staff perform radiological procedures at The Brain and Spine Imaging Center, our state-of-the-art imaging facility in Franklin, Wisconsin.

The majority of back pain patients will recover with conservative lumbar radiculopathy treatment, and surgery is not necessary. All patients will need to make routine exercise and proper body mechanics part of their everyday lifestyle to reduce the risk of injury.

If the radicular pain persists despite conservative therapy, surgical intervention may be considered. The specific type of surgery will vary depending upon the structural defect.

Possible surgeries include a lumbar microdiscectomy, lumbar laminectomy, or spinal fusion with or without instrumentation. Microdiscectomy involves removing a disc with the aid of a surgical microscope. Laminectomy is the removal of vertebral bone. Spinal fusion uses bone chips, with or without screws, rods, or metal cages, to fuse together two vertebrae after the disc in between has been removed.