• Curr Pain Headache Rep · Dec 2004

    Review

    Does osteoarthritis of the lumbar spine cause chronic low back pain?

    • David Borenstein.
    • Arthritis and Rheumatism Associates, The George Washington University Medical Center, 2021 K Street, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006, USA. dborenstein715@aol.com.
    • Curr Pain Headache Rep. 2004 Dec 1;8(6):512-7.

    AbstractThe lumbar spine is a common location for osteoarthritis. The axial skeleton demonstrates the same classic alterations of cartilage loss, joint instability, and osteophytosis characteristic of symptomatic disease in the appendages. Despite these similarities, questions remain regarding the lumbar spine facet joints as a source of chronic back pain. The facet joints undergo a progression of degeneration that may result in pain. The facet joints have sensory input from two spinal levels that makes localization of pain difficult. Radiographic studies describe intervertebral disc abnormalities in asymptomatic individuals that are associated with, but not synonymous for, osteoarthritis. Patients who do not have osteoarthritis of the facet joints on magnetic resonance scan do not have back pain. Single photon emission computed tomography scans of the axial skeleton are able to identify painful facet joints with increased activity that may be helped by local anesthetic injections. Low back pain is responsive to therapies that are effective for osteoarthritis in other locations. Osteoarthritis of the lumbar spine does cause low back pain.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…