Category: General Questions

Spinal fractures from severe trauma, such as very bad car accidents or motorcycle accidents, can sometimes respond to bracing. They often need reconstructive surgery.

A spinal fracture is a broken bone somewhere in the spine, anywhere from the bottom of the skull to the tailbone. Their presentation or symptoms vary tremendously, very commonly in osteoporosis, they can even occur spontaneously. So someone older with soft bone all of a sudden feels back pain, bending to lift or pick something up. Often an x-ray will diagnose it right away.

Spinal stenosis in the low back often starts with back pain, back pain that’s worse with walking, causing the patient to lean forward to open up the spinal canal. Classically, patients with spinal stenosis in the low back, they do well going to the supermarket because they lean over the cart and it makes more room for their spinal canal.

Spinal stenosis in the cervical spine or neck, if it gets bad enough, will cause patients to experience clumsiness, difficulty walking, difficulty with steps, numbness, tingling, and burning sensations throughout. Generally when it gets to that point, it’s a pretty severe situation and often requires timely surgical intervention.

Spinal stenosis is a condition where the spinal canal is narrow. In medicine, the word stenosis just means narrowing. So if you’re talking to a heart doctor, it’s narrowing of some valve or structure around the heart. If you’re talking to a spine doctor, it’s narrowing of the spinal canal. It can cause pressure on the nerves and other types of dysfunction.