What is dermatome?

Dermatome is an area of ​​skin that is innervated by a single spinal nerve. There are 30 pairs of dermatomes in the body, from the skull to the fingers, and everyone can be traced back to a specific nervous root. Although most maps of dermatomas show different zones, there are in fact a large amount of overlapping, but understanding how dermatomas work in the treatment and diagnosis of the disease. The arms and legs have longitudinal stripes, which explains why pain sometimes shoots a arm or leg because it follows dermatome. Cervical, thoracic, lumbar and sacral nerves that give nerve fibers to different dermatoms in the body. For example, the back of the foot is covered with a dermatoma that is innervated by the first sacral nerve.

In patients with neurological problems, pain in a particular dermatome can be very detecting a symptom. For example, someone with a compression of a spine that ZPůObviously a tight nerve, could experience significant pain in dermatome innervated with this nerve. Similarly, someone who has the outbreaks of shingles would correspond to the body of the body on the specific nerves of the spinal cord affected virus that causes shingles.

Dermatome pain is a symptom, not a condition, but it may be a very important symptom. Patients who report chronic pain or temporary pain in a particular zone of their bodies may reveal important information about the neurological condition or spinal cord problem and the physician may use this information to recommend treatment or give the patient to an expert who can solve the problem.

This type of Pain can be very frustrating for patients because it has no clear physical cause and may come and leave sporadically, depending on the type of damage. The skin may feel as if it has been itching, burning or experiencing other feelings that do not really occur, including the extremeoursted cold or severe pain. By monitoring pain back into the responsible nerve, the physician may develop a treatment plan for solving or mastering the basic cause so that the patient does not experience undesirable feelings associated with nerve damage or other nerve damage.