Intra-compartmental Test - HUGE needle

Judgement day came and went, and unfortunately for me, the majority of pain came a couple days after the intra-compartmental test. There are four compartments in each lower leg that are tested - The lateral compartment, anterior compartment, superficial posterior compartment, and deep posterior compartment. The way it works is the doctor takes the baseline pressures of each compartment - Basically the pressures of the compartments when you are at rest and have not been exercising. Then, you exercise for 10-15 minutes, trying to reproduce the CS pain/symptoms that you normally get. At that point, the pressures of the compartments are taken again. If a compartment is over 15 mm Hg at baseline, and over 30 mm Hg right after exercise, that compartment is positive for CS.

Sounds pretty simple, but in order to take the pressures, a needle needs to be stuck in the compartment - a big one. And 4 compartments on each leg tested twice adds up to 16 times that a huge needle went into my leg - not so fun. But while it was by no means pain-free, it wasn't excruciating. I did wince many a time, but on the whole, I've had worse. It did feel strange to run hard after getting pricked 4 times on each leg, and I actually did not reproduce the lateral pain symptoms I had been experiencing. My results are in the photo heading this post. A definite positive for deep posterior and anterior compartments, while one superficial posterior compartment was positive, and the other probably positive. Interestingly, the one completely negative test was the lateral compartment in both legs, where I thought most of my pain was coming from.

Next Post: Trying to deal with Compartment Syndrome non-surgically - Rolfing, stretching, and everything in between.