5. Numbness in an affected limb
When an osteochondroma is on top, adjacent to, or close to a nerve or blood vessel, the affected limb or limbs can experience an unusual and unsettling type of numbness. This numbness can be quite a distressing experience for someone to have to endure. The loss of sensation can be unpleasant and lead to alarm and distress, but this is a fairly common occurrence for people with osteochondromas, which usually isn’t too serious.
It’s more likely to be annoying than it is dangerous. The numbness can strike at any time and usually tends to occur when it is most inconvenient.
The numbness doesn’t tend to be triggered by anything, in particular, making it hard to predict and awkward to manage. Some people with osteochondromas report experiencing a complete lack of feeling amounting to full numbness, whereas others rank the feeling from a mild tingling through to a more definite numbness.