The sportsman and the burning thigh
You are seeing a 37-year-old male.
“Since last month I have been having a terrible pain on the right outer thigh. It´s burning and getting worse when I exercise. I had something similar maybe a year ago. But it was not that bad and just disappeared after some weeks… maybe two months.”
In a quick clinical examination you find a sensory deficit on the distal lateral thigh on the right. There is no weakness.
Based on that you turn on your ultrasound machine and look for … which nerve?
Below you see images and videos of the nerve. Tell us:
- Which nerve is this?
- What do you see?
- What is the name of the syndrome? and
- What about nerve conduction studies on that case?
Please note: Images enlarge when clicking on them.
1 Lateral Femoral cutaneous nerve
2 hypoechogenicity and increasing of size of the nerve
3 Meralgia Paraesthetica
4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1086508X.2005.11079529
The leteral cutaneous nerve of the thigh us swollen, hypoechoic so, it is inflamed may be due to compression.
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂
-Lateral femoral cutaneous nerve
-Compression at the ASIS by the inguinal ligament
Thank you for your input! Of course you are all right. This is a compression of the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve at the ASIS. We think this is quite a beautiful case in maybe not the typical patient with this problem 🙂
PS: for those who did not recognize: we are moving with the probe from the distal point of pick up on the proximal thigh proximally to the ASIS (if you don´t know how to do it – get our nerve guide in the Additional Resources).
I enjoy checking your web site. Thanks for your time!
Thank you, James 🙂