Periodic thigh pain from radicular endometriosis

Giampietro Zanette, Zanette G, Francesca Magrinelli, Stefano Tamburin
Practical neurology · 2014 · vol. 14(5) , pp. 351–353 · doi:10.1136/practneurol-2014-000819 · PMID:24594647 · W2031938178
article OA: closed CC0 ⤵ 4 in-corpus citations
View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by gemini-2.5-flash-lite, 2026-06-06 ⓘ

This case report describes a woman with periodic left anterior thigh pain exacerbated by menstruation, ultimately diagnosed as probable neuropathic pain after extensive normal imaging and ineffective psychogenic treatment.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

A 38-year-old woman gave a 2-year history of periodic left anterior thigh pain (figure 1), described as deep and excruciating. It would begin 2–3 days before menstruation. Its numerical rating scale score ranged from 5 to 7/10, rapidly peaked (up to 10/10), lasted 5–6 days and then vanished, with no pain between menses. She had seen various orthopaedic and pain medicine specialists, with a thorough radiological work-up, including lumbosacral MRI with gadolinium contrast (figure 2) and ultrasound scan and MR scan of the abdomen and pelvis, which were all normal. She was diagnosed elsewhere with psychogenic pain and treated with benzodiazepines, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and psychotherapy, with no effect. Figure 1 The patient's pain distribution. Figure 2 Lumbosacral MRI (L4–L5 levels) was normal, even with gadolinium. She was referred for neurological consultation, which she considered ‘the last resort’, before stopping any further medical test or treatment and living with the pain that had ‘no organic cause but came from a wrong state of mind’. On examination, the left patellar reflex was decreased and the femoral nerve stretch test was mildly positive on the left. According to the neuropathic pain diagnostic algorithm, she had probable neuropathic pain (table …

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Endometriosis Pain Thigh Adult Endometriosis Female Humans Magnetic Resonance Imaging Pain Thigh

Citation neighborhood (sparse)

Too few in-corpus citations on either side for a chart; here are the lists.

Cites (1)

Cited by (4)

References (4)

Cited by (4)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-08-31T06:09:41.840111+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-04T00:00:01.174412+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:18:35.150238+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK