The Natural History of the Pudendal Nerve Block

The firsrt aim of the study is to identify precisely how long a pudendal nerve block lasts and to find out how the different symptoms of pudendal neuralgia presented by the patient, evolve during the 52 hours following the pudendal nerve block. The second aim is to find out, for patients undergoing afterwards the pudendal nerve release surgery, if there is a correlation between the particular response to pudendal nerve block and the outcome after surgery. This will be a prospective study based on questionnaires. It will include a minimum of 50 women aged 18 or more, who had been referred to the Pudendal nerve Clinic in the Endogynaecology Department at the Royal Hospital for Women, who meet the entry criteria and who already consented to undergo a pudendal nerve block as part of their assessment. The participant will be asked to fill in a questionnaire, always the same, about her symptoms before, just after and then every 6 then 8 hours for 52 hours after the pudendal nerve block. If the patient undergoes a surgery to release the pudendal nerve entrapment, we will ask her to fill in that same questionnaire again 3, 6 and 12 months after the surgery.