Medically Reviewed by Eric D. Nabors, MD

Pinched nerves are a fairly common condition, affecting around 85 out of 100,000 Americans every year. For most people, a pinched nerve will be uncomfortable but harmless. Time, rest and home treatment relieve most pinched nerves, but when they don’t, other methods can help. McLeod Orthopedic Surgeon Dr. Eric Nabors explains the causes, symptoms and treatments for pinched nerves in the following Q&A.

Q. What is a pinched nerve?

The spine consists of the bones, the discs, the spinal cord, and the nerves. If a nerve gets irritated or pinched, where that nerve goes is going to feel pain. In the neck, if the nerve gets pinched, it goes into the arm. In the leg, if the nerve gets pinched, it merges into the sciatic nerve, and it goes down the leg. Some people call it sciatica. The medical term is radiculopathy.

Q. What are signs and symptoms of a pinched nerve?

The signs and symptoms of a nerve go along with what nerves do. They give us sensation, they give us pain, and they give us the ability to move our muscles by taking the signal from our brain to our muscles. So any one of those three things can happen. You can have pain. That’s typically the first early sign. You can have numbness, that’s if the pressure is even more severe. And then if the pressure is very severe, it can cut off the signal from your brain to the muscle, and you get weakness. So you can have pain, tingling, or weakness.

Q. What are common causes of a pinched nerve?

The most common cause is a ruptured disc. If the disc gets a crack that goes all the way through. This one doesn’t go all the way through (see video), but if it went all the way through, that would be rupture of the disc. And if it goes out, that’s a herniation, and then it hits the nerve and pinches it. So that’s the most common. The next most common would be spinal stenosis.

Q. What are treatment options for a pinched nerve?

So they’re going to be the same as low back pain, anti-inflammatory medicine, physical therapy injections, which some people call nerve blocks. Some people call ’em epidural injections. And then if all else fails and you’re miserable, then surgery.

Talk with an orthopedic specialist to learn more about pain due to a pinched nerve.