Lumbar Sympathetic Nerve Blocks

Lumbar sympathetic nerve blocks are very interesting. They are used to treat neuropathic pain or sympathetically maintain pain. There are several types of nerves in the body, two of which we hear about. The flight or fight system, which is sympathetic nervous system and the rest and digest system, the parasympathetic nervous system. In a disease process such as complex regional pain syndrome, there is a disruption of how the body communicates with itself in terms of the sympathetic nervous system. By doing a lumbar sympathetic nerve block, we can actually turn off this area to the lower extremities or in the upper extremities depending on where we are doing the block, but in a lumbar sympathetic nerve block we are able to turn off that nerve process and see if the pain goes away. If it does, then we know that it’s called sympathetically maintained pain and then we direct our treatments according to that finding. Interestingly, lumbar sympathetic nerve blocks have been used for other options as well. They have also been shown to increase blood flow to lower extremities, so for patients with Raynaud’s or peripheral vascular disease, it has also been shown as a temporary measure to alleviate that pain as well.