Ways Back Can Manifest In Other Body Areas
Health No Comments »There are two ways that a patient can experience referred pain. One is truly referred pain, meaning that tissue at one site is injured or irritated and causes pain to be perceived in another site. An example of this is the buttock or leg pain caused by a degenerated disk in the lower spine. Both need similar back pain relief treatment, but are obviously not initially linked to the back being the cause.
Another way that a patient can experience pain like this is radicular pain. One source of radicular pain is spinal stenosis, mentioned earlier, where narrowing of the spinal canal either from arthritis and overgrowth of the joints, a herniated disk, or congenital factors squeezes the spinal nerves, leading to pain, numbness, or tingling that radiates down into the buttock, thigh, or even down the leg. Both types of pain can occur at the same lime.
With true referred pain, people usually feel pain in or around the midline of their back, enough to recognize that it may well be a back problem. With radicular pain, it’s not uncommon for someone to think they have a pulled hamstring or a pinched nerve in their leg or even their foot because the symptoms all seem to be concentrated there. It’s the exception rather than the rule, but certainly occurs in a significant number of people.
Conversely, pains in the back are sometimes due to ailments in other parts of the body. Among the most common nonorthopaedic causes are pancreatitis, kidney stones, peptic ulcers, abdominal aortic aneurysms, or maladies of the ovaries, fallopian tubes, or uterus. Prostate or other cancers elsewhere in the body can also be to blame.
No wonder we cannot immediately relieve back pain when we can’t always diagnose our own back pain problems.
Tags: abdominal aortic aneurysms, back pain relief, kidney stones, peptic ulcers, pinched nerve, spinal nerves, spinal stenosis