Expert: Ronald Levy, M.D. - 5/4/2007

Question
Before I gave birth to my first child who is now 11, I recall another woman in L&D warned me about having an epidural. She stated that her pain started years later. Recently I have been having chronic pain in the EXACT spot the epidural(s) (I have 3 children) were administered. I have not done anything that would trigger it such as heavy lifting or change in daily activity.  

Answer
I would strongly doubt that the epidural is responsible for this as there is no medical, physiological or mechanical reason why. Since the location of the epidural is coincident with where most people get low back pain, people might make the wrong association. The first thing I would do is get an orthopedic evaluation (and possible an MRI or CT) to rule out disc disease before trying to ascribe it to the epidural. Obviously we do thousands of epidurals a month and not everyone has back pain so this is not likely the reason.

Ronald Levy, MD
Associate Professor of Anesthesiology
UTMB-Galveston