One of the most frequent complaints in my practice is low back or neck pain. It can be sharp, pulling. With “lumbago” or with irradiation by “shootings” in the extremity. It is customary to measure pain on a ten–point scale of VAS (visual analogue scale), where 10 is the maximum value. Most often, this pain is accompanied by limited mobility – it is difficult for a person to bend over and then straighten up, and the pain also increases after physical and static exertion.
What are the causes of this pain? The most common reason is the presence of degenerative diseases of the spine . If there is irradiation – “shooting” of pain in the limb, a tingling sensation, crawling goosebumps on the skin of the limbs – it is worth suspecting radiculopathy as a result of mechanical pressure on the spinal root (see picture). Most often, this occurs when an intervertebral disc herniation or its predecessor, protrusion, is formed. I will tell you more about this in the next article.
Depending on the localization, it is customary to distinguish degenerative-dystrophic diseases:
• Of the cervical spine;
• Thoracic spine;
• Lumbosacral spine.
Localization of degenerative diseases affects treatment tactics.
Degenerative-dystrophic diseases of the spine include:
• Osteochondrosis;
• Intervertebral hernias;
• Protrusion;
• Spondylosis;
• Spondyloarthrosis;
• Spondylolisthesis;
• Spinal canal stenosis;
• Spinal cyst;
• Osteophytes;
• Spondylosis;
• Osteoporosis of the spine;
• Sacroileitis;
• Myofascial syndrome;
• Facet syndrome (facet joint syndrome).