Normative sciatic nerve excursion during a modified straight leg raise test

Effect of Acupuncture TENS on Sciatic pain During Pregnancy

“…The most applied diagnostic test is the straight leg raise to produce Lasègues sign, which is considered positive if pain in the distribution of the sciatic nerve is reproduced with between 30 and 70 degrees passive flexion of the straight leg .While this test is positive in about 90% of people with sciatica [14].…”

Sciatic nerve excursion during a modified passive straight leg raise test in asymptomatic participants and participants with spinally referred leg pain

“…The transverse plane nerve images were analysed using the centroid method as described in Ridehalgh et al (2014), except in some cases where the borders of the nerve were not clear. In these cases the centroid method appeared to be markedly inaccurate compared to visual inspection of the image sequence, and therefore analysis of the transverse plane movement was done by using the cross-correlation technique.…”

“…Distal nerve excursion occurred in all groups, and most groups (except the somatic group) showed a greater increase in nerve excursion with 60 than 30 HF. Details of the rationale for this pattern of movement are discussed by Ridehalgh et al (2014), but briefly may be due to uncrimping of the nerve initially, and only with greater changes in nerve bed length does the nerve need to accommodate by greater amounts of nerve excursion. It is not clear why individuals in the somatic group had greatest nerve excursion at 30 , but the limited numbers in this group and high variability generally with these measures may be responsible.…”

“…The introduction and availability of ultrasound imaging (UI) into analysing tissue mechanics has led to an increase in the understanding of nerve mechanics (Dilley et al, 2001;Ellis et al, 2012;Ridehalgh et al, 2012;Boyd and Dilley et al, 2014;Ridehalgh et al, 2014). Recently, nerve excursion during neurodynamic testing has been investigated in both the upper (Coppieters et al, 2009) and lower limb (Ellis et al, 2012;Ridehalgh et al, 2014). However minimal data has emerged from symptomatic populations during neurodynamic testing.…”

A modified straight leg raise test to differentiate between sural nerve pathology and Achilles tendinopathy. A cross-sectional cadaver study

“…In this test, dorsiflexion-inversion, which mechanically challenges both the sural nerve and Achilles tendon (Lyman et al, 2004;Wilmes and von Piekartz, 2010), is followed by hip flexion. As mechanical forces are transmitted and distributed along long sections of the nervous system (Coppieters et al, 2006;Ridehalgh et al, 2014), it is argued that hip flexion can increase the load on the sural nerve without loading the Achilles tendon (Butler, 2000). However, to date, there are no studies that evaluate whether hip flexion can increase the mechanical provocation of the sural nerve.…”