Piriformis syndrome begins as a pain in your buttocks, but if it pinches your sciatic nerve, you’ll also develop classic sciatica and experience intense pain radiating down your leg. Shyam Purswani, MD, specializes in interventional treatments and piriformis injections that provide immediate pain relief. To learn more about your treatment options, call the office in San Antonio, Texas, or book an appointment online.
The piriformis is a muscle located deep in your buttocks, which helps rotate your hip and turn the leg and foot outward. Piriformis syndrome is the name of a condition that occurs when the muscle spasms.
Piriformis syndrome often develops due to:
All muscle spasms are painful on their own, but when the problem affects your piriformis muscle, another problem develops because it’s near the sciatic nerve.
As the sciatic nerve travels from your lower spine down to your legs, it passes through your buttocks, directly beneath the piriformis muscle. When the muscle becomes cramped or swollen, it pinches the nerve. As a result, you develop sciatica.
The symptoms of piriformis syndrome include:
When your piriformis syndrome causes sciatica, you’ll experience symptoms such as:
Although the severity of your pain may vary, most patients with sciatica have severe pain.
As a specialist in interventional pain medicine, Dr. Purswani offers treatments that effectively relieve your pain by targeting the nerve or the muscle. Treatments such as nerve blocks, epidural injections, and spinal cord stimulation, alleviate your pain by interfering with nerve signals. Your pain is eliminated when nerve messages don’t make it to your brain.
Piriformis muscle injections contain an anesthetic to relieve your pain together with a steroid to reduce inflammation and relax the muscle. Dr. Purswani may also recommend a trigger point injection to relax muscle spasms.
When Dr. Purswani administers injections, he uses ultrasound or fluoroscopy to visualize the muscle and guide needle placement. This type of real-time imaging allows him to precisely injection medications directly at the site of the muscle spasm or the nerve.
If you develop buttock pain that radiates down your legs, call Shyam Purswani, MD, or book an appointment online.