3 Tests to Identify a Pinched Nerve | Chiropractor in Philadelphia, PA
Hey, what’s up everybody, my name is Dr. Rogers Saias, and I’m the clinical director here at PA Pain & Rehab in Philadelphia. Today I wanted to talk to you about pinched nerves.
Do You Have a Pinched Nerve?
Now, a pinched nerve is really something that we see a lot of it more, more specifically, a pinched nerve happens when there’s an injury to the spine, and you have something that’s irritating the nerve could be pinching the nerve. But there’s usually after a car accident or are lifting injury, you can injure the discs, you can injure the spine, and it can irritate a nerve. And you can develop symptoms that go down into your arm, or go down into your legs. We see it all the time. So what are some things that you can do at home to determine whether or not you may have a pinched nerve that needs further evaluation.
Testing for a Pinched Nerve in Your Neck
So the first one is this, if you’re trying to determine whether or not you have a pinched nerve in the neck, you may be experiencing pain in the neck, you may be experiencing pain down into the arm and shoulder. So one way you can determine whether or not you have nerve irritation is this it’s called the pyramidal compression test. Now, obviously, if you do this test, and it’s making your symptoms that much worse, discontinued, don’t do it. But one thing that you can do to determine whether or not you have this irritation is simply bring your head back and you’re going to flex to the side. And then you can pull a little bit further and just kind of pump it a little bit. And if that’s causing an increase in pain, or a pain that goes down into the shoulder and down into the arm, you may have a pinched nerve. This is called the pyramidal compression test, you’re going to go back into extension, you’re going to bend your head to the left or to the right, and you can just gently pull it a little bit further. And if it’s causing more pain, you may have irritation to a nerve in the neck, definitely need to get that checked out.
Testing for a Pinched Nerve in Your Back
The next one, you can determine whether or not you have something going on in the low back. This one’s called the slump test and it’s really exactly as it sounds, you’re going to slump down. So you’re going to get into this slumping position and you’re going to lift your right leg and you can lift your left leg as you’re slumping. And if this causes pain into the low back pain into the hip or down the leg again and getting into this position could further irritate the nerve causing that increase in your symptoms, which may indicate you have nerve irritation.
Testing for a Pinched Nerve in Your Hips
Now the third test that we do in our office and something that you can do at home, it’s called the straight leg razor. Alright, obviously when we do in the office, we get more information that you’re going to get right now. But if you do this test and it increases your pain and causes pain down into your legs, again, you may have what’s called a pinched nerve, you’re simply just gonna lie on your back. You’re gonna raise your right leg up as high as you can. Some people may only get to here and it causes an exacerbation of the pain can you’re going to raise your leg up as high as you can go. If it causes pain, or causes irritation and causes pain down the leg, you may have a pinched nerve. Now when we do these tests in the office we can get a lot more information. But if you want a quick way to determine whether or not you have something more serious going on that needs further evaluation, you can perform these tests again the pyramidal compression, the slump test and the straight leg raise are all to determine whether or not you have nerve irritation.
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