New Outpatient Treatment Offers Chronic Pain Sufferers Hope

	Pudendal nerve entrapment (PNE) can occur suddenly or develop gradually over months.

“After this treatment, I’ve witnessed patients who had been previously misdiagnosed by as many as 25 to 30 other doctors break down and cry when, suddenly, their pain is gone,” says Memorial Hermann Fort Bend Hospital radiologist James Murphy, MD, as he describes patients he has treated for pudendal nerve entrapment (PNE) — a condition so excruciating that, for many, sitting is not an option.

Eliminating the Pain
PNE is an unexplained nerve condition that causes pain in the area served by the pudendal nerve, which carries sensations from the external genitals, the lower rectum and the perineum, the area between the genitals and the rectum. Pain may affect one area, several or all.

PNE can occur suddenly or develop gradually, over months, without being noticed until the pain peaks. It may be caused by prolonged sitting. In women, it can occur after childbirth or pelvic surgery.

Kenneth Renney, MD, a Memorial Hermann affiliated sports medicine specialist and colleague of Dr. Murphy’s, was a competitive cyclist who developed genital pain after being hit by a car in 1997. For two and a half years, doctors misdiagnosed his condition as prostatitis. When treatments failed to relieve the pain, he turned to Murphy, who injected his pudendal nerve with a steroid and local anesthetic — the combination of which is called a pudendal nerve block and serves to both diagnose and treat PNE.

“Finally, here was a treatment that actually eliminated my pain and we made the diagnosis from that,” said Dr. Renney, who underwent surgery in France, the only country at the time offering such surgery.

After his surgery, Dr. Renney returned to France to study PNE treatment, and in May 2002, he assembled a highly specialized team that now offers diagnosis and treatment of PNE with the pudendal nerve block at Memorial Hermann Fort Bend Hospital. Also on the team are Memorial Hermann neurologist Charles Popeney, DO, whose nerve condition studies evaluate damage to pudendal nerves, and neurosurgeon Lee Ansell, MD, who performs surgical release of trapped pudendal nerves in patients who do not respond completely to the nerve block.

“We have seen more than 225 patients, ranging in age from 17 to their 70s,” says Dr. Renney. “Our patients have traveled from as far away as South Africa, California, New York and Florida after learning about the treatments online.”

To learn more about treatment options, call 713-222-CARE.