Nerve pain — burning, tingling, electric shocks, numbness — comes from damage to or pressure on a nerve, and does not respond to ordinary painkillers. Treatment combines the right medication, treatment of the cause, and image-guided nerve blocks or perineural injections where a specific nerve is involved. Dr. Kiruthika works with your physician or diabetologist.
Nerves carry pain signals; when they are damaged by high blood sugar, a virus, compression, injury or chemotherapy they generate pain on their own. Because the fault is in the nerve rather than in a joint or muscle, anti-inflammatories do little; medication that calms nerve signalling, and treatment directed at the nerve itself, work better.
History and examination of sensation, strength and skin changes; ultrasound of accessible nerves to look for compression or swelling; nerve conduction studies and blood tests where the cause is unclear. Diabetes control and foot checks are reviewed with your diabetologist.
Conditions treated
Nerve damage from long-standing diabetes, usually in both feet first. Treatment: blood sugar control with your diabetologist, medication for nerve pain, foot care to prevent ulcers, and in selected cases ultrasound-guided perineural PRP injection around the affected nerves, which is offered with clear expectations as an emerging treatment.
Pain persisting after shingles along the same skin band, often severe to light touch. Early antiviral treatment of shingles reduces the risk. Established pain: medication, topical agents, and nerve blocks — intercostal or paravertebral for the trunk, occipital or trigeminal branches for the head.
A nerve compressed at a tunnel or under a ligament: carpal tunnel, ulnar nerve at the elbow, common peroneal nerve at the knee, tarsal tunnel, meralgia paresthetica. Ultrasound identifies the site; hydrodissection frees the nerve with fluid under direct view. Surgery when there is muscle wasting.
Numbness, tingling and pain in the hands and feet during or after chemotherapy. Managed with medication and supportive measures in coordination with the oncologist; nerve blocks for localised pain.
Severe, disproportionate pain in a limb after injury or surgery, with swelling, colour and temperature change and extreme sensitivity. Early diagnosis is critical. Treatment combines medication, active physiotherapy and sympathetic nerve blocks — stellate ganglion for the arm, lumbar sympathetic for the leg — to allow rehabilitation.
Nerve blocks and hydrodissection take fifteen to thirty minutes under ultrasound guidance. Sympathetic blocks take twenty to thirty minutes with monitoring and a short observation period.
Seek urgent medical attention today if you have loss of bladder or bowel control, numbness in the area you sit on, weakness that is getting worse, fever with the pain, a recent fall or major injury, or unexplained weight loss. These are not conditions for an outpatient injection.
Nerve pain uses different pathways from joint or muscle pain. It responds to medication that calms nerve signalling, not to anti-inflammatories.
Compression can be relieved and the nerve often recovers. Damage from diabetes is slowed by good control and its pain treated; full reversal is uncommon.
No. It reduces pain for weeks to months and allows rehabilitation; it can be repeated.
An injection near the nerves that control blood flow and sweating in a limb, used in CRPS to reduce pain and swelling so the limb can be moved.
For neuropathy of unknown cause, yes. Dr. Kiruthika will refer where the diagnosis needs it.