SI joint pain is one of the causes of low back pain. Often times it is misdiagnosed as lumbar pain or pain from either degenerative disks or degenerative joints of the lumbar spine. The SI joint is a joint where the lumbar spine meets the pelvis, it is a very complex joint that is held together by a lot of ligaments.
Often times these ligaments can become inflamed or lax resulting in SI dysfunction, which can result in SI pain or sacroiliac pain.
Often times patients will come in saying that they have low back pain that’s off to one side. Sometimes this can mimic sciatica where the pain radiates down a portion of the leg and into the groin.
A lot of times even us as clinicians misdiagnose SI pain as coming from a different part of the spine such as a herniated disk or a degenerative arthropathy of the lower back. Traditionally our misdiagnosis of low back pain that’s really coming from the SI joint has led to us treating low back pain with modalities such as lumbar fusions and interventional pain injections of the lumbar spine that really haven’t improved our patients symptoms.
As our knowledge of what really may be causing upwards of 30% of low back pain improved and as clinicians as we started to look at the SI joint as a pain generator and low back pain, our ability to treat these symptoms improved and we’ve been able to help upwards of a third of our patients.
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