Pudendal Neuropathy
Glossary of Terms
"If you wish to talk to
me, first define your terms."
Voltaire - Supplied by Paul Tod Rieger
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Most of these are medical terms. The definitions are written for the layman, with additional comments for the context of PN. To keep the number of terms managable we have excluded pain medicines, many obscure related conditions, many anatomy terms, and such.
Several online sources were used in these definitions. The main ones are:
Dictionary.com - An excellent all purpose dictionary, much like the book dictionaries we are used to.
MedicineNet - This medical dictionary has over 10,000 terms, many with very good long descriptions. As the site says, "we bring doctor's knowledge to you."
Medline - A 4,000 entry medical encyclopedia from the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Health. It's superb search engine covers a large number of other databases. The Medline encyclopedia has no entries on "pudendal," indicating once again how little known PNE is in the US medical world.
Wikipedia - This
is an incredibly broad and well written free encyclopedia. Surf it and
become an instant intellectual. 
Acute - Acute means sudden or severe. Symptoms appear, change, or worsen rapidly. The opposite of chronic. (Medline)
Chronic - A chronic condition is continuous or persistent over an extended period of time. A chronic condition is one that is long-standing, not easily or quickly resolved. Chronic is the opposite of acute. (Medline)
Chronic pain is pain that has been present for three to six months, depending on who's defining the period. Chronic conditions tend to much harder to treat because the physical and psychological changes causing it have become much more permanent. The best strategy is to cure the condition before it becomes chronic. This is why the medical system expedites cases that are not yet chronic.
See MedicineNet's long definition and discussion of chronic pain. This includes how pain affects men and women differently, neuropathic pain, and nerve blocks. PN pain is neuropathic pain.
Entrapment - A disorder of a peripheral nerve characterized by pain and/or loss of function of the nerves as a result of chronic compression. (From Nerve Entrapments Syndromes) The most common form of entrapment is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS). See PNE.
Hyperaesthesia - A neurologic symptom where there is an unusual increased or altered sensitivity to sensory stimuli. (Dictionary.com)
Hypertrophy - A nontumorous enlargement of an organ or a tissue as a result of an increase in the size rather than the number of constituent cells. (Dictionary.com) Common examples in PNE are muscle hypertrophy and ligament hypertrophy.
Infiltration - Synonym for injection.
Injection - Synonym for nerve block if the context is PN.
Nerve Block - Injection of a local anesthesia to temporarily stop the ability of a nerve to transmit pain signals. The typical anesthetic for PN nerve blocks is lidocaine. PN nerve blocks are an important diagnostic tool. See What is a nerve block? and MedicineNet's nerve blocks as part of their entry on chronic pain.
Neuralgia - Pain along the course of a nerve. (MedicineNet) Also: A disease, the chief symptom of which is a very acute pain, exacerbating or intermitting, which follows the course of a nervous branch, extends to its ramifications, and seems therefore to be seated in the nerve. It seems to be independent of any structural lesion. (Dictionary.com)
Neuralgia is a subset of neuropathy. Thus the more precise term for pudendal area pain is Neuralgia. PN is therefore best called Pudendal Neuralgia, not Pudendal Neuropathy, as we have been accustomed to doing. (Thanks to Pierre Gauvin for this observation.)
Neuropathy - Neuropathy is a disease of the nervous system. The three major forms of nerve damage are: peripheral neuropathy, autonomic neuropathy, and mononeuropathy. (Wikipedia)
[Need to explain peripheral versus autonomic nerves, how PN is a form of peripheral neuropathy.]
Perineum - Unfortunately this word has two different meanings. As defined in Dictionary.com the meanings are:
"1. The portion of the body in the pelvis occupied by urogenital passages and the rectum, bounded in front by the pubic arch, in the back by the coccyx, and laterally by part of the hipbone."
"2. The region between the scrotum and the anus in males, and between the posterior vulva junction and the anus in females."
It appears that Professor Robert uses the first definition. When the term is used in the context of "the anal region, perineum, and external genitals" the second definition is in effect. It seems the medical profession has, like the English language, run out of words and so has to reuse them, resulting in much ambiguous prose.
PN - Acronym for Pudendal Neuropathy. However, as explained in neuralgia, PN is more precisely called Pudendal Neuralgia.
PNE - Acronym for Pudendal Nerve Entrapment. PNE occurs when the pudendal nerve becomes entraped by surrounding tissues, usually the sacrospinal or sacrotuberal ligaments. For unknown reasons these ligaments become swollen in some people, causing PNE. An uncommon form of PNE is lamination of the pudendal nerve to adjacent tissues. See What is PNE?
PNMLT - Acronym for Pudendal Nerve Motor Latency Test. See What is the PNMLT?