Conditions Treated
Conditions Treated
Peripheral nerves transmit information between the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and every other part of the body, which not only generates sensations of touch or temperature, but also creates movement and controls coordination. At the Ohio State Peripheral Nerve Clinic, we treat patients with nerve damage or injury, most commonly involving compression or entrapment--often referred to as “pinched nerves.”
When peripheral nerves are injured, there may be a range of symptoms, including pain, numbness, tingling or pricking sensations and weakness. Sometimes, surgery is the only way to improve symptoms because the nerve must be physically freed from its compromised position or directly repaired.
While there are hundreds of conditions treated by the Peripheral Nerve Clinic at Ohio State, the most common are listed below. Please note that Ohio State also offers a Peripheral Neuropathy Clinic to treat medical disorders such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome and diabetic nerve problems. Regardless of your issue, Ohio State has the specialists you need.
Accurate, State-of-the-Art Imaging
At Ohio State, multiple imaging techniques are used in combination to provide valuable insight to the nerve problems causing a patient’s symptoms.
- Magnetic Resonance Neurography is a recent modification of traditional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and allows direct imaging of nerves in the body.
- Nerve anatomy and any changes in nerve appearance can be seen in great detail due to the high-resolution of the image.
- Ultrasound is painless and allows high-definition evaluation of peripheral nerves.
- Healthy nerves appear as continuous bundles of fibers separated from surrounding connective tissues. Abnormal findings visible with ultrasound may include swelling, breaks in the connective tissue, loss of fiber architecture, cysts or tumors.
- Ultrasound offers additional diagnostic value for “entrapment syndromes” (conditions where nerves are directly compressed, such as with carpal tunnel syndrome), including when physicians may not be able to directly evaluate the electrical activity generated by nerves using electrodiagnostic localization.
- Ultrasound can not only reveal compression or narrowing of a nerve, it can also identify any issues with the surrounding structures (such as a persistent median artery causing carpal tunnel syndrome).
- Also visible with ultrasound are nerve enlargements (as with nerve tumors) or when a nerve is severed, such as after trauma.
To further aid diagnoses, Ohio State’s expert neurophysiologists may perform electromyography (EMG), nerve conduction studies (NCS), and other specialized tests, such as single fiber recordings.
