How to Treat Inguinal Neuralgia

Inguinal neuralgia is pain in the pelvic or groin region due to nerve damage. Specifically, it is from damage to the ilioinguinal, iliohypogastric or genitofemoral nerves. Which nerve is injured can be difficult to diagnose. The leading cause of such damage is scarring or inadvertent damage from hernia operations.

Instructions

• 1

  Look for a physician who has access to and experience with magnetic resonance neurography. This machine is able to image nerves, unlike magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography. This can help determine which nerve is damaged.

• 2

  Look for a physician with experience in treating inguinal neuralgia as a second choice. The malady is an uncommon condition, so finding someone with much experience in it won't be very easy, and you may have to travel to a large city to find someone. The physician may be able to determine which nerve is damaged without magnetic resonance neurography by blocking nerve function in 1 nerve at a time to see if relief is delivered.

• 3

  Pursue the doctor-recommended diagnosis. No medications have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for this sort of injury. However, trigger point injections of lidocaine can be used to ease the pain. Nerve block injections are also a possibility. These injections relieve pain by interrupting how pain signals are sent to your brain. These are remedies for short-term pain. However, patients with inguinal neuralgia usually see their pain disappear 3 to 6 months from the date of the hernia surgery.

• 4

  Relieve pain that does not resolve in 3 to 6 months by removal of the affected nerves. This surgery replaces the pain with numbness. The prognosis is that most patients experience an improvement.

• 5

  Pursue a "selective L1 spinal nerve stimulator" if nerve removal does not work. The spinal nerve stimulator sends electric pulses to the spinal chord (the L1 vertebra, specifically) to interfere with the nerve impulses that make you feel pain.