Middle Cluneal Nerve Entrapment Surgery

What are Middle Cluneal Nerve Problems?

The middle cluneal nerves are an interesting set of peripheral nerves because these are the nerves that come out of the backside of the sacrum. If these nerves are damaged, it can produce a sensation of low back pain, people can complain of pain in the sacral area, and the very lowest of these nerves can cause tailbone pain or coccygeal pain. There’s lots and lots of patients out there who are diagnosed with coccydynia or tailbone pain. This can be after some kind of traumatic injury, like a fall, or just prolonged chronic sitting I think sometimes irritates these nerves and causes them to be pain generators.

Most of the time, the doctors don’t really understand where this pain is coming from. They’re removing the coccyx thinking that the coccyx is the source of the pain when in reality it’s these little damaged nerves. These nerves are quite small nerves, and you really have to know where to look for them. That’s very often a procedure which does not give them good pain relief, and in a situation where the pain is actually coming from these damaged nerves, it could make it worse because now you’ve added another surgery and more trauma and scarring and stuff around these nerves.