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Sacroiliac Joint Pain


Sacroiliac joints are two joints that are present in the lower spine on each side of the sacrum where the sacrum is attached to the pelvic bone called ilium.  The sacroiliac joints are significant weight bearing joints, which have a limited range of motion.  Because of various reasons these can become painful.  Sacroiliac joints are commonly painful in patients with a degenerative bulging disc or in patients where a nerve root might be pinched by a bone spur.  Postsurgical patients may also have significant sacroiliac pain.

 
 

Treatment is usually medications, resting or utilization of a specific belt to stabilize the joints.  Local injections can also give pain relief and some physicians also tend to burn the nerves supplying the sacroiliac joints by radiofrequency treatment.  Sacroiliac prolotherapy or ligament proliferation can also be done to strengthen the joint support by strengthening the ligaments and that can also be helpful in nonsmokers. 

 

Sacroiliac fusion can also be done in appropriate cases and that also can be very useful in patients with disabling sacroiliac pain especially the patients who have had low back surgery which did not help them and they are having severe disabling lower back pain overlying the sacroiliac joint/s.