Osteopathic Case Study

The case of the "trapped nerve"

Mrs B, twenty four years old, had lifted her three month old son on to her right hip and felt an acute pain in her low back, followed by pain in her bottom, groin and upper thigh. She also noted that she suddenly had some difficulty in controlling her urinary flow, something she had never experienced before.

Her general practitioner diagnosed "a trapped nerve" but because she was still breast-feeding did not want to prescribe any medication and suggested that she go to bed for initially one week and "see how that helps". With a two-year-old toddler, a husband and a dog to look after, this was not practical advice and she was advised to seek osteopathic help.

On examination it was seen that she had strained her right sacroiliac joint which was producing muscle spasm and that was irritating her lumbar nerve roots causing the pain in her bottom, groin and thigh. It also explained the difficulty she was experiencing in bladder control as the nerve supply to the bladder and its sphincters all arise from the low back.

She received osteopathic treatment to her lumbar spine and, as osteopathy correctly applied treats the whole spine and not just the affected area, treatment was also given to her thoracic and cervical spine. After two treatments she reported being free from pain in her low back, her inability to control her bladder had ceased but, to her surprise, the indigestion she had experienced for many years, which she had not mentioned at the initial consultation and for which she had always had to use antacid, had stopped. She could now eat almost anything with no heartburn or indigestion.

Anatomically and osteopathically it is well known that the internal organs of the body are controlled by the spinal nerves and if the nerves are irritated at their nerve roots then the organs those nerves supply will have an altered function. This is a similar effect to having irritation on a lumbar nerve root, which produces pain with a sciatic distribution [sciatica] except that in this case the nerve root supplies an organ and is neither a motor nor sensory nerve.