Your sciatic nerve branches out from the lumbar spine and travels through your hips and down your legs deep inside of them. When something compresses the sciatic nerve at the root, sciatic nerve pain radiates through your buttocks and down the backs of your legs.

Sciatic nerve pain, also called sciatica, can include other symptoms too. Instead of pain, you might experience numbness, tingling, or weakness originating in the back of the leg. Typically, sciatic nerve pain happens on just one side at a time and gets worse when you change your posture by bending down or twisting the spine.

Not all pain in the lower back or the backs of your legs and buttocks is sciatica, so you should get an evaluation from Dr. Creek at The Neck and Back Institute of Florida to confirm the diagnosis.

There are many conditions and injuries that can compress the sciatic nerve and cause sciatic nerve pain on either your left or your right side. Using imaging tests like X-rays or MRI scans, Dr. Creek can evaluate your lumbar spine for the cause of your sciatic nerve pain and use the results to plan surgery if it’s necessary.

You can develop sciatic nerve pain from the following issues when they happen in or near the lumbar spine (lower back):

• Disc herniation or bulging

• Bone spurs

• Spinal stenosis

• Spondylolisthesis

• Sacroiliac joint dysfunction

• Inflammation in your pelvic muscles

As you age, your risk for sciatic nerve pain gets higher. That is due to disc degeneration and other processes in the body that put you more at risk for damage and injuries. You also elevate your risk for sciatic nerve pain if you sit for long periods of time, neglect exercise, or are overweight.

Most sciatic nerve pain responds well to non-surgical treatments and therapies like spinal injections, physical therapy, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). You may need lumbar spinal surgery at The Neck and Back Institute of Florida if you have severe symptoms like loss of bladder control or major weakness in the legs.

Dr. Creek specializes in the following spinal surgeries for sciatic nerve pain:

• Minimally invasive discectomy

  • Minimally invasive discectomy is a procedure to remove a small portion of a spinal disc that places pressure on the sciatic nerve root.

• Minimally invasive foraminotomy

  • During minimally invasive foraminotomy, Dr. Creek carefully removes bony overgrowths that are placing pressure on the sciatic nerve root.

• Laminectomy

  • During a laminectomy, part of the back portion or the whole back portion of the vertebrae, which is called the lamina, is removed to ease pressure on the sciatic nerve.

In addition to these options, Dr. Creek can perform disc replacement or spinal fusion to treat sciatic nerve pain.