Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy – Sciatic Nerve Treatment

Sciatic nerve stretch treatments help diabetic peripheral neuropathy  pain and vibration sense further confirming nerve entrapments in diabetes

A RANDOMIZED SHAM-CONTROLLED TRIAL OF SCIATIC NERVE NEURODYNAMIC MOBILIZATION IN PAINFUL DIABETIC PERIPHERAL NEUROPATHY
P. S. Kumar1, P. Adhikari2, M. M. Prabhu
IASP Poster PH 479, Montreal 2010

Sciatic nerve stretches were done something like this:

• Leg is brought up to 90 degrees with knee bent and then knee straightened – 5 times each – 5 sets
• Then transverse sciatic nerve massage – adjacent to but not on sciatic nerve – five reps, 5 sets again

People were given 1 hour sessions,  one weekly for 5 weeks – there was a control group as well

Neuropathic pain questionnaire dropped from around 62 to 30 (versus 62 to 56 in control)

The short neuropathic scale involves:

This seems like it would give a fair idea of pain..

Vibration sense improved 20% versus maybe 5% for control.

Comment – seems simple enough be not sure why it took an hour and suspect subjects could do home exercises. I wonder if results could have been improved by working on the piriformis as well as sciatic nerve sometimes goes right through it (or partially so)