cervical spine

[i2leen]

What does this all mean?
Reversal of normal cervical lordosis with multilevel degenerative changes identified at C4-C5 through C6-C7.  
C4-C5 Loss of disc height and signal.  Dorsal and ventral osteophytic bar and broad annular disc bulge.  Mild uncinate and facet hypertrophy results in efacement of the ventral thecal sac and mild bilateral neural foraminal narrowing.
C-5-C6 Mild loss of disc height and signal. Dorsal and ventral endplate osteophytic spurring and broad annular disc bulge is noted.  finding result in subtle effacement of the ventral thecal sac without significan canal stenosis.  associated uncinate and facet hypertrophy resul in mild left neural foraminal narrowing.
C6-C7 Mild loss of disc height and signal.  Posterior osteophtic bar and broad annular disc bulge noter resulting in mild effacement of the ventral thecal sac.  Minimal uncinate and facet hypertrophy noted without significant neural foraminal narrowing.

[Kalvin]

Lordosis is the natural curve of the neck, some people lose this curve over time and its thought that when you do lose it your at a greater risk for things to go wrong. I was told that my neck is straighter than normal, I don’t if it’s had any effect on my neck problems or not. I don’t worry about it.

The majority of your MRI just describes the arthritic changes you have in your neck, a lot of that is just normal wear and tear. Are you over 40? The loss in disc height is related to the discs that are in between each vertebra, there like a cushion in between the bones and they do wear out as a natural part of aging and from stress and strain. They lose their water content and will compress, that’s what they mean by loss of disc height, and you only have one at C4-5, the other levels are mild, so there’s a good chance their not causing you any pain. The loss in disc signal just has to do again with the loss of water content.

The Osteophytic spurring and facet hypertrophy are types of arthritis, most people tend to develop some level of this as the get older. You do have a few disc bulges, but bulges are a lot better to have than herniations and in a lot people they don’t even cause any pain. The good news for you is that you don’t have any canal stenosis or spinal cord compression at any level, you do have mild effacement of the thecal sac (that’s the sac contains the nerves and spinal cord) but its minimal and that’s not known to cause pain anyway. And you have minimal foraminal stenosis which is good too. The operative word in this MRI is minimal, when they start writing moderate or severe, then start worrying.

Your Doctors are going to have to try and pinpoint where your pain originates, because your symptoms are very generalized. I still get the headaches too, I know their awful. If your just getting a lot tingling and not stabbing pains in your hands and arms, it shouldn’t be too hard to recover from. With me I got the tingling, stabbing pains and then parts of my arm and hand went numb.

How long have you been dealing with this and what type of Doctors have you seen? At what point are you  with your treatment, have they sent you to P.T. or tried injections yet?

Take Care

[i2leen]

;my pain and symptoms are chronic headaches, stiff, painful neck, shoulder pain, tingling numb (like when your feet fall asleep) in my arms and hands.

[i2leen]

chronic headaches, stiff, painful neck, shoulder pain, tingling numb (like when your feet fall asleep) in my arms and hands

[Kalvin]

Tell us a little bit about your pain and symptoms and then we can correlate them to your MRI.