The sciatic nerve and and its relation to the piriformis muscle syndrome regarding daily clinical practice. A review

Abstract

IntroductionThe sciatic nerve innervates most of the muscles of the lower limb, so any alteration in it'sits function or clinical presentation could directly affect the functioning of the lower limb. Therefore, the normal anatomy, anatomical variants and how these can influence clinical implications in the gluteal region are of importance in daily clinical practice.MethodsodologyA systematic review was carried out in the scientific literature to answer our research question. We searched in the databases MEDLINE, SCOPUS, WOS, Scielo, GOOGLE SCHOLAR and other scientific sources, using search terms in relation to our stated objectives and connected through Boolean terms.ResultsThe results of this study show that the variations of the sciatic nerve can be ample, which associated to the variability in the geographic regions of the studies, sex of the sample and incidence of the variation, will make it necessary to consider different multifactorial components for the anatomical analysis of sciatic nerve variations and for clinical considerations in patients with and without these anatomical variations.ConclusionWith the results of our review, we can infer that the sciatic nerve presents a variability of distribution patterns, which may be presented in the classical anatomical literature as a variability that is found differently in the population. In addition to inferring that the variation of the sciatic nerve can be little attributed to the symptoms of the piriformis muscle syndrome.