What Causes Lower Back Pain?
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If you wonder what causes lower back pain and want to know the answer, you need to thoroughly read this article. Everyone experiences some form of spinal pain in their lifetime. By definition, back pain is characterized by discomfort and painful sensations due to damaged discs, muscles, ligaments, tissues, and nerves.
What Causes Lower Back Pain?
Lower back pain can be caused by lifting heavy objects, sudden movements, accidents, falls, poor posture, and sports injuries. A chronic lower back pain lasts for three months and involves a joint, disc, or nerve root problem.
Compression Fracture
Fractured cylindrical vertebrae can cause sudden pain in the lower back. It is mostly due to weak bones that result from osteoporosis and is more common in older adults. It can be treated with various back pain treatments, such as medication, physical therapy, and surgery.
Trauma and Deformity
Dislocations or acute fractures of the spine can cause lower back pain. It develops after a trauma, such as a sudden fall or a car accident. Deformity refers to the breakdown of the facet joints, sacroiliac joints, and discs. Spinal deformities also include kyphosis and scoliosis, which can cause severe pain in the lower back.
Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis is a painful condition that causes damages to the disc and facet joints. The condition causes inflammation, pain, instability, and stenosis. Research studies highlight that osteoarthritis can occur at single and multiple levels of the lower back. The most common cause of this condition is aging. Osteoarthritis is also known as degenerative joint disease and spondylosis.
Spondylolisthesis
Back pain can result from spondylolisthesis, which occurs when one spinal bone slips over the adjacent one. Not only does it cause pain, but it also leads to compression of nerves in the leg and instability of facet joints in the back.
Spinal Stenosis
Spinal stenosis causes pain by narrowing the spinal canal. It affects the nerve roots located at the spinal canal and occurs at single or multiple levels in the lower spine. The narrowing of the spine is either central or foraminal. Either way, it can cause severe pain and discomfort in the back.
Degenerative Disc Disease
At a young age, intervertebral discs are healthy and strong. However, as the age progresses, discs lose hydration and tend to wear down. Due to loss of water content, the discs fail to resist external forces, weakening the spine and causing pain. The disc can also undergo wear and tear to cause spinal stenosis.
Lumbar Herniated Disc
A lumbar disc contains a jelly-like substance that can break through the outer layer and affect the nearby nerve root. Because the herniated portion of the disc contains proteins, it can lead to inflammation, nerve compression, and pain. The disc wall also contains nerve fibers that can tear through the wall and cause painful sensations.
Back Pain Treatments
There are various back pain treatments, including muscle relaxants, painkillers, physical therapy, massage therapy, acupuncture, back exercises, and steroidal injections.
First, a health professional will prescribe conservative treatments to relieve back pain. When these treatments fail to provide relief to the patient, the doctor may consider minimally invasive surgery.
What is Minimally Invasive Surgery?
Now that you know what causes back pain and what conservative treatment options are let us talk about minimally invasive surgery, which is the best treatment for lower back pain. Several minimally invasive surgery types are ALIF, PLIF, XLIF, LLIF, Microdiscectomy, Laminectomy, etc.
It is a type of surgery that requires the surgeon to make a small incision in the back, abdomen, or side of the body to reach the lumbar spine. The surgeon then removes the damaged disc and places the bone graft material using a cage, rods, and screws. The bone graft material fuses the two vertebrae into a single bone over time.
Minimally invasive surgery can fix almost all spine problems, such as spinal stenosis, herniated disc, spinal deformities, scoliosis, spondylolysis, fractured vertebrae, and spinal infections.
Here at MINT, we have state-of-the-art facilities and advanced tools that help our surgeons perform the surgery adequately. Minimally invasive spinal surgery is an effective method to treat back pain caused by degenerative disc disease.
Surgery leads to less scarring, reduced blood loss, shorter hospital stays, and faster recovery. The patient can go home the same or the next day as it depends on their condition. It is crucial to undergo the post-surgery rehabilitation period to have a complete recovery from back pain.
Do you want to know what causes back pain? Is minimally invasive surgery suitable for you? Contact MINT today and schedule an appointment with our qualified surgeon.
