Fractured or Dislocated Coccyx sound familiar? Can you benefit from Coccyx treatment?

What you should know…

Did you injure your tailbone? Suspect that something has been wrong ever since? Has your doctor told you that you have coccydynia or that your tailbone was dislocated or fractured? If so, the next questions should be:

Top 4 questions for those diagnosed with Coccydynia:

  1. Is your coccyx in a normal position or is it bent, angled, hooked or displaced?
  2. Has your coccyx lost any of its natural range of motion?
  3. Have you experienced a loss of flexibility in your back hips and legs?
  4. Have you noticed a loss of strength or a feeling of fatigue or instability in your hips or legs?

These are what a doctor, familiar with the SacroCoccygeal or S/C syndrome, uses to determine what treatment is necessary for your coccydynia to improve.

The Kemper Tailbone Injury Foundation has begun developing a network of physicians familiar with the S/C Syndrome who will provide you with treatment and exercises to help cure or relieve, not just the pain or coccydynia, but the stiffness, weakness and several other internal symptoms commonly associated with the S/C syndrome.

More articles and studies needed

Because few studies have been published about the S/C Syndrome most doctors and patients are of the understanding that not much can be done for coccydynia, other than physical therapy, chiropractic, blocks and surgery. And while surgery is sometimes necessary it should not be performed unless the more conservative treatments have failed. Now the Kemper-Wooley Procedure can be added to the list of conservative treatments.

Coccydynia; what is it really?

Until now, the most common diagnosis given to people with coccyx pain was “Coccydynia”. Coccydynia literally means “Pain at or around the coccyx”. While pain is certainly a common symptom for people with loss of coccyx function, there is much more to a coccyx problem than just pain, including loss of flexibility of the lower back and hips as well as loss of strength in the thighs or legs. The good news is that just because you fractured or dislocated your coccyx doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t be helped, even if you have been suffering for a long time. Drs. Kemper and Wooley have helped thousands of patients become pain free after many years of suffering. So, even if you have tried many therapies and blocks, if you have an undiagnosed case of the S/C syndrome, you could be in for a pleasant surprise. What matters is that your coccyx is brought back into normal, pain-free function, like that shown in the video clip

What is normal coccyx function?

Normal coccygeal function is important. The coccyx serves as a flexible “anchor or spring” for the spinal cord. Yes, you read this right …for the “Spinal Cord” and it outer protective covering called the “Meninges or Dura”.

Having watched the S/C syndrome video, you have a much better understanding of coccyx function, especially the protection it provides the spinal cord and can see why it would be important to properly rehabilitate your coccyx or tailbone after injury.

How is the Coccyx Rehabilitated? A logical analogy

To better understand how a coccyx functions think of it as being very similar to a finger. Both a finger and a coccyx are comprised of 3 bones connected by 3 highly flexible joints made of ligaments and cartilage. Tendons and muscles attach on both the front and back of a finger and a coccyx. A finger is loaded with very sensitive nerves, both sensory and motor, so that a finger is both sensitive to the sense of touch but also so it is capable of performing fine tasks like writing, playing music or buttoning a shirt. Whereas the coccyx is not particularly sensitive to touch it is also “loaded”, quite literally, “spring loaded” with the lower end of the spinal cord.

Both a finger and a coccyx are prone to injury. A finger can be hyperextended or jammed by a basketball. A coccyx can be jammed, displaced or fractured by any number of mishaps and accidents. Like all joint injuries, it takes months for sprained fingers and coccyges to fully heal and regain full, pain-free motion once again.

Question: What’s more serious: a fractured finger or coccyx?

Fractured finger

We pose the question to provoke thought. It seems that almost everyone is familiar with an injured finger and has a good idea of how to treat it. Yet, when asked about a tailbone or coccyx injury, it seems everyone has a different answer.

KTIF is committed to eliminating the confusion about tailbones in attempt to standardize an understanding that can lead to diagnosis and treatment of the S/C syndrome.

For example, if you broke your finger, you would want it to heal with full motion like it had before it was fractured or dislocated. As a writer, baseball pitcher, artist, musician or surgeon, a fractured finger could be very a very serious and disabling injury. “Very serious” in that it would be important for it to heal with full flexibility so that it could resume serving its function in your specialty and life. If your fractured finger healed with full function, in hind site, one could say that it was not a serious injury. But what if your finger was dislocated or fractured and it was not set back into position nor was it properly rehabilitated back into full motion? You would loss some function and would suffer impairment as a result.

Fractured Coccyx

A coccyx fracture is much the same. So long as it heals with full natural range of motion, in hind sight, it would be no big deal. But what if your coccyx was dislocated or fractured and it was not set back into position nor was it properly rehabilitated back into full motion? What then? You would loss some function and would suffer impairment as a result. But what type of impairment would you suffer? This is where so much confusion exists and why diagnosing the SacroCoccygeal syndrome is so important: The many symptoms that classically result from a loss of coccyx function involve muscles and nerves of the spine, hips, thighs and legs. In many cases these coccyx injury-induced symptoms are given a different diagnosis named after the muscle, nerve or area affected. For instance, there is a muscle inside the pelvis, called the piriformis, one of the first to become strained when the coccyx loses motion. Chronic piriformis muscle pain is then called the “piriformis syndrome” because, like all syndromes, it too has several symptoms and causes impairment. Or take “chronic pelvic pain”, for instance. It is a diagnosis often used to diagnose chronic pain within the pelvis, but does not specify what is causing the pain. Various nerves or nerve bundles often become irritated by the spinal cord tension and loss of spinal flexibility seen in the S/C syndrome. When this happens, yet more diagnoses are given such as “sciatica”, “pudendal syndrome” or “trigger points”. The list goes on. It is important to know that there are other causes of these few named conditions, other than the coccyx. This is why the coccyx should be tested…to better determine what cause what.

The good news

The good news is that restoring coccyx function helps many of these and other diagnosed symptoms, conditions and syndromes. KTIF knows this because of the rapid improvement seen in most cases when coccyx function is restored. And while results vary, restoring coccyx function is really quite simple. You doctor, familiar with the S/C syndrome, can quickly tell you if you have it. If you do, simple exercises and the Kemper-Wooley procedure(s) can quickly and often dramatically relieve the symptoms caused by the coccyx that is displaced or has lost some or all of its motion. How important is it to restore function and prevent a sequel of pain, impairment and dysfunction?

KTIF agrees that it is absurd to let a dislocated finger “heal” in a dislocated position. If that happened, we suppose you could say that the patient would have “Finger Syndrome”, but, thankfully, that would probably never occur. Every doctor and therapist knows just what to do to insure that a dislocated finger is properly rehabilitated.

But what about the coccyx? Until recently, not much was published about the coccyx. Neither its necessary range of motion to protect the spinal cord from excessive tension, nor the serious loss of thigh strength, spine flexibility or referred pain was reported. And this is why coccyges tend, to this day, to be overlooked. It is nobody’s fault; it is just that none of the spinal care professions paid much attention to the tailbone. Again, KTIF’s mission is to change all that.

What can be done?

Now, information about coccyx rehabilitation is gradually getting out to patients and spine physicians who are documenting the symptoms that accompany serious coccyx injuries and including the procedure that can reliably restore coccyx function, even long after the original injury occurred in many instances.

KTIF is adding more and more physicians to its nationwide directory so that people with tailbone injuries can find a physician familiar with the SacroCoccygeal syndrome and the Kemper-Wooley Procedure.