Having lower back pain problems can be a serious health condition if you don’t treat them in time, and can even become irreversible once they become chronic. Unfortunately, many people wait until is too late and the more time passes, the harder it gets to treat lower back pain.
This kind of health issue is most often than not caused by the injury of a muscle or a ligament. For instance, lower back pain is more often found among different sportsmen and can also happen while lifting a heavy weight that your spine is not ready to sustain. Such injuries can include a serious damage to the soft-tissue or intervertebral discs as well as compression of nerve roots and it can modify the movement of the spinal joints which, in time, can lead to a serious dysfunctional lower back.
Chronical lower back pain is a bit more serious and harder to treat than temporary injuries. This kind of pain can be caused by a lumbar herniated disc, degenerative disc disease, facet joint dysfunction, sacroiliac joint dysfunction, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, osteoarthritis, deformity, trauma or a compression fracture. However, even if these conditions are present, that doesn’t mean that they are automatically the cause of a lower back pain and further medical investigations are needed. There are some rare possible causes of a lower back pain condition such as a spinal infection, a tumor or an autoimmune disease.
But in order to identify the cause and the real level of a lower back pain, one needs to go to a specialist doctor and do the proper investigations, without which no treatment would be effective. The way the patient describes the symptoms and their medical history is an important starting point for the diagnostic process because based on this kind of information, the doctor will be able to have a general idea concerning the source of the medical condition. At the first visit to the doctor the patient will be asked to give specific details about their lifestyle such as describing the current symptoms, the level of activity that they have in their life, their sleep habits, their daily and most common posture, and previous possible injuries.
But the most important information is found in the patient’s medical history! After all this information was provided to the doctor, a physical exam will be required in order to properly put a diagnosis on such a serious medical condition. During this exam, the doctor will touch with their hand the back of the patient to locate any possible muscle spasm or tightness or joint abnormalities. A neurological exam will also be needed and such a process includes the examination of the manual movement of a hip, knee and big toe extension and flexion, and ankle movement as well as testing the patient’s reaction to touch. Other tests that the doctor will perform in order to put a correct diagnosis are the range of motion test, the reflex test and the leg raise test.
After putting together the results from the physical exam and the medical history of the patient as well as other information provided by them, the doctor will be able to put a correct diagnosis on the lower back pain and establish the treatment that will fix the problem as soon as possible. In some serious cases, this treatment can include a surgery and physical therapy while in others some supervised exercises and drugs are enough to bring the patient back to their healthy condition. But in order to get the proper care and receive the best medical advice, one can’t simply ignore such a pain, even if it doesn’t seem to be a very intense one. Sometimes the lower back pain gets worse over time without the patient actually realizing the gravity of the situation and the more time passes, the harder will be to be treated. If you find yourself having such symptoms and recognise one or more of the causes that were presented above, is important to reach medical help as soon as possible, even if you are not seriously affected by this condition.
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