Sciatic pain: a diagnostic pitfall

Neurological signs such as lower spinal cord lesions and/or femoral neuritis may be the presenting symptoms of a dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). We describe a patient in whom a severe sciatic pain was the presenting symptom of a non-dissecting AAA. The resection of the vascular mass resulted in dramatic relief of sciatic pain, thus indicating that the neurological impairment was caused by the non-dissecting aneurysm.