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Spinal Stenosis
December 6, 2008 |
Spinal stenosis is an arthritic condition that affects many people as they age.
Dr. Wesley Faunce is a neurosurgeon who often treats the condition. He says, “Typically
it’s your Medicare population patients, usually in the 60-plus crowd.”
Spinal stenosis can
be quite painful and can even prevent some patients from doing
normal daily activities like walking. “Typically people get pain either into their
hips or their thighs and occasionally as low as their calves and a lot of patients
mistake it for having an arthritic hip. Some people
will also complain of sciatica
pain down the back of the leg,” says Dr. Faunce.
Even though the condition develops in the spine, most patients experience
leg pain
as opposed to back pain. Physicians attribute that to the compression of nerves
in the spine. “Stenosis just means a narrowing
so spinal stenosis is a narrowing
of the spinal canal.
It’s the canal that all the nerves travel through and the canal
that your spinal cord travels through. As it becomes narrow you put pressure on
the nerves and that’s what gives you the symptoms,” says Dr. Faunce.
While spinal stenosis generally affects mostly older adults, it can also develop
in younger people who have rheumatoid arthritis or certain types of dwarfism. |
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