Today we’re going to talk about low back pain. With this type of pain we look at x-rays and MRIs, depending on the presentation of the patient. Why are they feeling low back pain, how did they get the low back pain? There’s a whole rationale and we do that through our initial examination.
So let’s fast forward, I decided to take x-rays on this patient to determine what is it that’s causing her back pain. So we can see here on this x-ray of her low back, looking at it from the front. We put lines over the spine and hips to see exactly how bad this misalignment is. So this spine is really crooked, the green line is where you’re supposed to be and she is shifted to the left side. The red line is the indication of how badly the bones are out of place. Then, looking at the side view, we get to see what’s happening. The low back is supposed to have a curve, but one of the things that jumped out at me is, what is going on with one of the discs. The disc is deteriorating, these are supposed to be nice and spacious, that last disc is not looking very good. We’re going to see that when we look at the MRI.
So toggling to the MRI, we can see the low back from the side, and we see the disc spaces here, they’re nice and big. If you look at that last one, it’s pretty small. Let’s zoom in on that and we can see what’s happening with this person. There’s a lot of deterioration on the disc, this is also one of the things that’s causing her pain. In her case, this problem that she’s experiencing is pain from her disc and also because of the misalignment of her spine. This is a more complicated case, we will take care of these types of cases here at the office.
And again, we’re able to order MRIs if we feel that you need a MRI. So, if you’re having complicated low back pain, come see me, we’ll do a consultation, an examination, we’ll see which of the diagnostics you need, the x-ray or an MRI, or both.
Contact us for an appointment going for you, and we’ll see how we can help your problem out. Thank you.
