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Coccydynia

Do you suffer from severe pain in your tailbone?

Is sitting or standing too painful?

Are you tired of using strong pain-killers and carrying coccyx cushions everywhere?

At Pain Relief Ireland we recognize this and we can help. Coccydynia (often called tailbone pain) is becoming increasingly common due to changes in our lifestyle. Often it starts after a fall or injury to your tailbone, when you slipped or perhaps during childbirth. However, for the majority there are often no particular trigger factors.

Frequently treatments such as physiotherapy, osteopathic manipulation and even cortisone injections fail to help. The pain slowly dominates your life. It gradually causes more disabling pain and at its worst, it can mimic sciatica like symptoms that may radiate into the legs. Very often individuals struggle to go to work, they find it difficult mind their family and their constant pain leads to frustration increased anxiety, anger, isolation and depression.

Our consultant at Pain Relief Ireland, Dr. Dominic Hegarty has more than 12 years of experience treating patients in acute and chronic pain. In particular he manages individuals with chronic coocydynia. He is a fellow of the Faculty of Pain Medicine and holds the Fellowship for Interventional Pain (FIPP). He understands the impact “tailbone pain” can have on the quality for your life. More importantly he recognizes that many cases of tailbone pain can be due to hypersensitivity of the nerves in the area will respond to a specific a nerve block of the coccyx (called the impar ganglion). This can help “reset” the pain and provide relief.

What does it feel like?

  • Patients often complain of a number of symptoms that progressively get worse.
  • Pain on sitting down which is often worse when leaning backward
  • Pain is often intense and localised to the bottom of the spine and seem to spread to the groin or go down one or both legs
  • It is often very tender to touch
  • Pain often feels worse on standing after sitting for a period of time


What are the likely causes of coccydnia?

There are a number of reasons for pain to develop in the tailbone. These include:

Trauma

This is one of the common causes. This can be due to a sudden fall on the bone during sport, slip on ice or fall from a height. Often this is due to injury to the ligaments or muscles around the coccyx than the actual bone itself. Rarely the bone itself sustains a fracture or dislocation.

Pressure

Often sustained pressure such as sitting on a hard surface for a prolonged period of time, poor posture, horseback riding, or cycling can cause this problem.

Childbirth and labour

A number of ligaments of the pelvis are attached the coccyx and during the latter stages of labour, excess stretching of the ligaments can cause this pain. Often this settles but symptoms persisting beyond 3 months may need interventions

Idiopathic

Often the exact cause for the pain cannot be found or identified. This is known as an idiopathic cause.

Being obese or overweight

This can cause pain due to again excess pressure on the coccyx while sitting

Age

Often aging processes can affect the ligaments and the disc causing pain

Malignancy (cancer)

Both primary and secondary. (Very rare indeed)

Treatment Options at Pain Relief Ireland

Dr. Hegarty advocates combined treatment options. He would go through the options with you and these may include:

  • Organization of any further tests such as X-rays, CT scans or MRI scans as necessary.
  • Suggest suitable medication taking into account other medications you might be on and plan an individualized treatment plan for you.
  • Organise a specific program with our chartered physiotherapists who can help you with this condition after the injection.
  • Organize to provide local anaesthetic and steroid injections into the bone or surrounding ligaments under x-ray or ultrasound guidance if required
  • Set uplong-term options include the impar ganglion block and offer radiofrequency ablation if indicated. This is under x-ray guidance.

Re-assure you that Coccydynia can be managed much better with a combination of the above therapies and suitable lifestyle changes, thus improving your quality of life.