What Can I Expect From a Hydrodissection?

Nerves, the complex system of fibers that carry sensory and motor information to and from the brain and throughout the body, play a crucial role in involuntary functions and in the ability to feel pain, pleasure, and other sensations. Everything from reacting to stubbing your toe to digesting food is regulated by your nervous system for normal function.

Nerves can be damaged in many ways, including compression, sometimes called a pinched or trapped nerve. This condition can happen for several reasons, and many treatments can manage symptoms. However, hydrodissection offers a solution that targets the nerves responsible for nerve entrapment syndrome-related problems.

To learn more about how it works and how often you should have hydrodissection, residents in the Fort Worth, Texas area seeking relief from compressed nerve issues can find help from Dr. Joseph Daniels and the medical team at Southwest Orthopedic Associates.

Facts about nerve entrapment syndrome

Nerves become compressed when squeezed or compacted, typically occurring in a single location, and are more common in the torso, limbs, and extremities. Examples of entrapped nerves include:

• Carpal tunnel syndrome: the most common type, occurs in the wrist’s median nerve

• Cubital tunnel syndrome: compression of the ulnar nerve in the elbow

• Radial nerve compression: impacts the arm’s radial nerve and can inhibit the wrist, hands, and fingers

• Meralgia parasthetica: issues in the lateral cutaneous nerve can cause problems in the outer thigh

• Guyon’s canal syndrome: another condition affecting the ulnar nerve that can inhibit hand function

• Suprascapular nerve compression: affects nerve function in your shoulders

This condition affects the peripheral nervous system and is also referred to as entrapment neuropathy or compression neuropathy.

Causes and symptoms

Several problems can lead to nerve entrapment, such as accidents, traumatic injury, sprains, bone spurs, fractures, joint dislocations, herniated discs, pressure from increased weight, tumors, cysts, scar tissue, or complications from surgery. Anyone can find themselves struggling with these issues, but it’s more common in sports, construction, or assembly work.

Nerve entrapment syndrome can affect many parts of the body, but symptoms are often similar and include tingling, numbness, pain, limited mobility in the affected area, weakness, muscle loss, and difficulty holding or grasping objects. Depending on the reason or severity of the problem, signs may come and go and worsen when using that part of the body.

How hydrodissection helps

To treat this problem, hydrodissection uses an ultrasound-guided process to place fluid around affected nerves, separating them from surrounding structures such as muscle, fascia, scar tissue, and tendons. 

This procedure can use several solutions in the injectate for hydrodissection, including saline, 5% dextrose (D5W), corticosteroids, local anesthetics, platelet-rich plasma (PRP), and hyaluronic acid. Using this treatment allows us to separate the nerve from tissue that compresses it, reduce pressure to improve movement, and help when other methods fail.

Using hydrodissection can be effective for managing the associated burning, tingling, pain, and weakness that match our diagnostic findings, and may not be as effective against advanced compression that needs surgery, severe axonal loss, or cervical/lumbar radiculopathy.

If you’re having problems with nerve entrapment syndrome, you can find solutions like hydrodissection and many others with Dr. Daniels and the team at Southwest Orthopedic Services. Make an appointment today to get relief.