What is piriformis syndrome?
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:
- Overuse injuries
- Muscle irritation
- Muscle tightening or swelling due to injuries
- Bleeding in the area of the muscle
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.
What symptoms develop due to piriformis syndrome?
The symptoms of piriformis syndrome include:
- Pain when sitting
- An ache in your buttock
- Reduced movement in your hip
When your piriformis syndrome causes sciatica, you’ll experience symptoms such as:
- Pain radiating down your leg and into your foot
- Numbness and tingling in your leg and foot
- Muscle weakness in the affected leg
Although the severity of your pain may vary, most patients with sciatica have severe pain.
How does interventional pain medicine relieve piriformis syndrome?
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.
