Ganglion Impar Injections

Treatment of tailbone pain (coccyx pain, coccydynia) by injection of local anesthetic to the ganglion Impar

Patrick M. Foye, M.D., Professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey, USA. www.TailboneDoctor.com and www.TailbonePain.net


Contact information:
Patrick Foye, M.D., 90 Bergen St, DOC Suite 3100, Newark, NJ, 07103.
Phone: 973-972-2802. (Please note: This number is ONLY for making appointments for in-person evaluations. Medical advice can NOT be given by phone to patients who have not been evaluated yet within the office here.)  

 


Summary
The ‘ganglion Impar’ is a group of nerve cells in front of the sacrum/coccyx joint. Over-activity of these nerve cells may cause chronic coccyx pain. Injecting these nerves with a local anesthetic often gives immediate temporary relief from coccyx pain. When the anesthetic wears off, the pain usually returns at a lower level than before, presumably because the over-activity of the ganglion Impar has been reduced. Repeating the injections can eliminate or at least very substantially reduce the pain in many patients. Often the degree of relief from these injections is so substantial that patients previously considering surgical removal of the coccyx no longer feel the need to have surgery.  


The ganglion Impar: part of the “sympathetic nervous system”
The ganglion Impar is a group of nerves located just in front of the place where the sacrum and coccyx come together. The ganglion Impar is part of the “sympathetic nervous system.” The sympathetic nervous system is the part of the nervous system involved in the “fight or flight” response. Certain pain syndromes involve prolonged or extreme pain signals, perhaps related to increased irritability or excitability of the sympathetic nervous system. A classic example would be Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS, which was historically more commonly referred to as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, or RSD). One of the classic and most dramatically helpful treatments for RSD, at least short-term, has been the injection of local anesthetic onto the sympathetic nerves that cover the body region were the patient is having the RSD pain. For example, a stellate ganglion block is done at the neck can help with RSD pain “downstream” in the arm or hand. Similarly, a lumbar (lower back) sympathetic block is done for RSD pain in the leg or foot.  Thus, the sympathetic nervous system can be temporarily blocked with local anesthetic injections at the stellate ganglion (for upper limb pain syndromes), or at the lumbosacral sympathetic ganglions (for lower limb pain syndromes). Similarly, the sympathetic nervous system can also be temporarily blocked with local anesthetic injection at the ganglion Impar (particularly for coccyx pain syndromes).


Nerve blocks
A nerve “block” means that the physician has injected a medication that will “block” the nerve from carrying the electrical signal that the nerve would otherwise carry. If you “block” a nerve carrying sensation from the skin, then you would cause numbness in that region of the skin. A common example of a nerve block would be when your dentist injects lidocaine to prevent you from feeling pain while the dentist is working on your teeth.


Nerve blocks at the ganglion Impar
If tailbone pain (coccyx pain) is being caused by over-activity (excessive irritability) of the sympathetic nervous system, then performing a nerve block at the ganglion Impar may help to dampen or quiet down that over-activity and excessive irritability. Thus, nerve blocks at the ganglion Impar can decrease (and in some cases eliminate) tailbone pain.


Treatment of tailbone pain (coccyx pain, coccydynia)
One of the theories is that persistent over-activity (excessive irritability) of the ganglion Impar may be responsible for persistent and severe tailbone pain. Thus, an injection to block the signals of that ganglion Impar can very dramatically decrease the pain. Typically, most of my patients will report 100% initial relief of their coccyx pain within just a couple of minutes of having the injection with a local anesthetic. In fact, for these purposes the injection can be considered somewhat diagnostic (meaning that if in reality the patient had coccyx pain that was due to just referred pain from an internal organ, uterine fibroids, etc. then they would not have received the dramatic/complete relief with nerve blocks directed very specifically at the coccyx). Hence, the diagnostic nature of the injection.


Fluoroscopy is required (avoid “blind” injections at the coccyx)
You can only be fully confident of the exact placement of the medication if you are performing the injection under the guidance of fluoroscopy (or under the guidance of a CT scan, but that is MUCH more cumbersome and takes far longer than fluoroscopy). The reason why the imaging-guidance (fluoroscopy) is needed is that the target area is very small and surface anatomy alone is inadequate at reaching the desired target. In general, I recommend against performing “blind” injections of the ganglion Impar. “Blind” injections means that the physician performs the injection only based on surface landmarks, without using imaging studies during the procedure to see where the tip of the needle is. Without image guidance, it is unlikely that the medication will be injected at the spot where it would help the most. If you had a tailbone injection but it was done without using fluoroscopy at the time of the injection, it probably was NOT a successful ganglion Impar injection. Worse yet, “blind” (i.e., without fluoroscopy) attempts at injecting the ganglion Impar could increase the chances of injecting into other structures, which might cause injury to the patient.


Patient response to Impar injections: Initially 100% Relief
Most patients with true coccydynia will receive 100% or nearly 100% initial relief via appropriately placed injections (i.e., confirmed via fluoroscopy), with local anesthetic. Most patients with severe coccyx pain are indeed pleasantly shocked at the amount of relief that they can receive. For many, it is emotionally very uplifting and reassuring to have such an immediate relief of pain that they may have been suffering from for many months or years. However, the local anesthetic (usually lidocaine, also called Xylocaine, or lignocaine) will typically wear off within a matter of a few hours. Other local anesthetics (such as bupivacaine, which is also called Marcaine) can last longer than the lidocaine, but may take a little longer for the initial onset of relief. I typically perform the ganglion Impar injection primarily with lidocaine the first time that I do it on any given patient, in order to give me and the patient the immediate feedback of how much relief they can get. If the relief is not long-lasting enough, repeat injections can be performed with the addition of a longer-acting local anesthetic, such as Marcaine.


Patient response to Impar injections: Some relief persists
When the local anesthetic wears off, the coccyx pain usually returns, but usually not as severe as it was prior to the injection. Thus, if someone is rating their pain on a “zero to 10 scale”, they might report that their pain was an “8” prior to injection, “zero” immediately after the injection (before the local anesthetic wears off), and 3 or 4 during the days, weeks or months after the local anesthetic has worn off. In my pain management practice, I typically refer to this as “resetting the thermostat”, meaning that breaking that vicious cycle of coccyx pain (even for a matter of hours) usually leads to a lower pain level, without rising back up to the pre-injection pain levels. Next, if this same patient wants to further decrease the residual/remaining pain from that level “4” severity, then the injection could be repeated at a subsequent date, to further “reset the thermostat” to an even lower pain level.


Complete “cure” by Impar injections
In some patients, a single injection may provide 100% relief that lasts long-term (without ANY coccyx pain returning at all). In fact, I have published in the medical literature about documented results where a single injection produces permanent relief of coccyx pain. But the more typical response is that after the initial (immediate) 100% complete relief starts to wear off, some of the coccyx pain usually comes back, but often at a MUCH lower pain intensity than before the injection.


Ganglion Impar injection versus surgery
Most patients with coccydynia are not “cured” long-term by a single injection, and nor does surgery give a 100% cure in most patients. But most patients with coccydynia will get significant long-term relief via appropriate injections. Most patients are extremely appreciative of having received relief with such a minimally-invasive procedure. (By “minimally-invasive” we mean that this is just a very small local injection under fluoroscopy, as compared with undergoing spine surgery to remove all or a portion of the coccyx, which can have variable results.) My recommendation is that most patients who are considering surgery should at least first try non-surgical treatment such as Impar injections. Many patients will receive enough relief that they no longer need to consider surgery.


Nerve blocks
Nerve “blocks” can block the nerves either temporarily or more permanently. Really it just depends upon what medication/agent is injected onto those nerves. Injecting a local anesthetic will block those nerves just temporarily, until the local anesthetic wears off. For example, your dentist might inject a local anesthetic such as lidocaine in order to be able to perform a dental procedure (such as a root canal) without you barely feeling it while he/she performs the surgery.


Destroying the nerves (not usually necessary)
Nerve blocks with local anesthetics are just temporary. To stop a nerve more permanently, you would need to inject the nerve with a “destructive” agent, rather than just a local anesthetic. The destructive agent could be phenol or absolute alcohol, or anything else that is outright toxic to the nerve. Essentially, injecting a destructive agent onto the nerve can intentionally “kill” or destroy that nerve, or at least a portion of the nerve. If that nerve was carrying painful signals to the brain, then theoretically the signals should be stopped. One of the problems with destructive agents is that often they are toxic/destructive not only to nerve tissue, but also can cause damage to adjacent soft tissue structures in the body. Thus, they should be used with caution. Another potential problem is that even if you destroy a nerve at one point along its pathways, the more central portions of the nerve are still going up to the brain, and some patients might develop the de-afferentation pain syndromes (similar to the way that someone with an amputated leg might still feel like they are having pain in the amputated foot, even though that foot no longer exists, but indeed the nerves which previously carried those signals from that foot certainly do still exist in the spinal cord and brain). Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is another way to destroy nerve tissue, but instead of using a destructive medication, it uses radiofrequency waves at the tip of an injection probe. Radiofrequency ablation is certainly not nearly as well established for pain at the coccyx as it is for pain from spinal facet (zygoapophyseal) joints. Even after a segment of nerves is “destroyed”, the nerve can slowly grow back, and re-innervate the structures that the nerve was connected to before. When that nerve segment has grown back, it is possible for the pain to return, but ideally the patient would have at least gotten some significant duration of relief in the meantime (e.g. several months).  Thus, the main theoretical benefit of “destroying” the nerve (instead of just blocking it with a local anesthetic) would be a longer duration of relief. However, destructive agents carry a substantially higher risk of complications, as compared with injections of simple local anesthetics.

 


Patrick M. Foye, M.D., Professor of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey, USA. www.TailboneDoctor.com  and www.TailbonePain.net

 


Contact information:
Patrick Foye, M.D., 90 Bergen St, DOC Suite 3100, Newark, NJ, 07103.

Phone: 973-972-2802. (Please note: This number is ONLY for making appointments for in-person evaluations. Medical advice can NOT be given by phone to patients who have not been evaluated yet within the office here.) Fax: 973-972-2825


  RELATED WEBSITES AND WEB-PAGES:

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Doctor / Physician

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Free Review Article at eMedicine

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Publications

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Information

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Dr. Foye

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Injections

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) New Jersey (NJ)

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) New York (NY)

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) New York City (NYC)

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Pennsylvania (PA)

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Connecticut (CT)

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Images, Xrays, MRI & Photos

Dr. Foye’s Listing on Spine Universe

Information on Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) Relief

eMedicine article on Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain)

Testimonials from Patients with Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain)

Dr. Foye’s Faculty Profile at New Jersey Medical School

Tailbone Pain (Coccyx Pain) images on Flickr


Dr. Foye’s “How to” articles on Tailbone Pain:
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How to tell if you have a DISLOCATED TAILBONE (COCCYX DISLOCATION)

How to tell if you have a BROKEN TAILBONE (FRACTURED COCCYX)

How to tell if you have TAILBONE PAIN (COCCYX PAIN)

How to describe TAILBONE PAIN (COCCYX PAIN)

How to Pick a COCCYX CUSHION (TAILBONE CUSHION) for Coccyx Pain (Tailbone Pain)

How to know if your MRI included the TAILBONE (COCCYX MRI)

How to Cope with TAILBONE PAIN DURING PREGNANCY

How to SIT with TAILBONE PAIN

How to Decide about Tailbone Removal (Coccyx Removal Surgery, Coccygectomy) for Tailbone Pain

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 Patrick Foye, M.D.,
Director of the Coccyx Pain Center,
PM&R at Rutgers
New Jersey Medical School,
90 Bergen St,
DOC Suite 3100,
Newark, New Jersey,
USA, 07103For an appointment, call:
973-972-2802
TAILBONE PAIN


 Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2013.
Patrick Foye, M.D.
www.TailboneDoctor.com
and
www.Tailbone.info
and
www.TailbonePain.net

 

Disclaimer:
This web site is for
general informational purposes only.The information should not be
considered as medical advice.The information is not a substitute for appropriate in-person care
by a physician
with expertise in evaluating
and treating tailbone pain.This website
is not meant to represent
official views
of any university,
medical school,
hospital, etc.
 

 

Effective July 2013:
New Jersey Medical School is part of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.