Pelvic Pain

Pelvic pain may be truly difficult to diagnose since chronic pelvic pain sufferers may have an associated gastrointestinal pathology. The cervix, uterus, ovaries, and lower portions of the ileum, sigmoid colon, and rectum have the same visceral innervations. All female pelvic pain patients should first see a gynecologist and all male pelvic pain patients should first see a urologist. Since the differential diagnosis may be confusing, for example, patient suffering from irritable bowel syndrome could easily have referred pain to the pelvic region. To complicate matters, some health care members such as gynecologists, general practitioners, internists, may not be trained in various diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that can be offered by a skilled interventional pain physician such as Dr. Minehart. Patients that come see Dr. Minehart should with them studies that include pelvic ultrasound, abdominal MRI, bone scan, and lab tests like CA-125.

Male pelvic pain

Despite thousands and thousands of hysterectomies being performed for pelvic pain, many times the patient will begin to experience the same pain 4-6 months after the surgical intervention. This makes me believe that the sympathetic nerves are involved with some of the most difficult pelvic pain patients and require a well performed sympathetic block to prove the etiology that patients are suffering from sympathetic mediated pain. Those patients may also benefit from spinal cord stimulator/neuromodulation