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Getting a leg up on sciatica.

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Getting a leg up on sciatica

Surgery brings faster relief, but if you can wait it out, nonsurgical treatment may be just as effective over the long run.

Sciatica is a medical term that seems a little old-fashioned, like lumbago or the grippe. For many of us, it conjures up childhood memories of elderly relatives wincing and talking about their "sciatica acting up." We knew it had something to do with the back, although we weren't quite sure what.

But sciatica (pronounced sigh-AT-eh-ka), both as a term and a condition, is still very much with us. The hallmarks are pain and numbness that radiates down the leg, often below the knee. In nine out of 10 cases, sciatica is caused by a displaced disk in the lower spine.

The best medicine is often patience * with some stoicism mixed in * because the pain often goes away, even if the problem disk does not. Researchers have found that about half of acute sciatica patients assigned to the placebo group in randomized trials (which means they are not getting active treatment) improve within 10 days, and three-quarters feel better after a month. No one is quite sure why the pain subsides on its own, but it does.

But if the pain is very bad or persists, many people with sciatica must decide whether to have surgery. There are several sorts of operations, but they all involve paring back disks in some way so they don't impinge on nerve...

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