Read the full article at Beckersspine.com.

“Osteoarthritis (OA) often affects the lower back (lumbar spine) and neck (cervical spine) and develops through wear and tear, though it has a strong genetic component, too,” said Dr. Kirschner. “OA pain is typically more noticeable when you bend backward or twist your back or when you’re standing for a while.”

Dr. Kirschner explained other possible causes for back pain such as scoliosis, degenerative disc disease, and lumbar spinal stenosis. “The physical changes of scoliosis often start in childhood or adolescence, but the condition might not start causing back pain until middle or older age. Scoliosis usually causes back pain from muscle imbalance or because it leads to other conditions (like spine arthritis or disc disease), but it in and of itself doesn’t cause pain." Degenerative disc disease is a condition where pain is caused from an unhealthy disc. Normally, discs don’t have much feeling, however after a disc injury, new nerves grow into the area that can transmit pain signals, he noted. Lumbar spinal stenosis compresses the nerves that branch out from the spinal cord, causing symptoms such as tingling, numbness, or weakness. You may have sharp shooting pains that radiate down the leg. Or, pain can be dull, burning, tearing or feel like a muscle pull, said Dr. Kirschner.

Radiofrequency ablation is another option for treating OA in the back aside from medication. “The treatment can provide longer-term pain relief for some patients; pain can be eased for one to two years,” said Dr. Kirschner. “However, it may not work in all patients and recent osteoarthritis treatment guidelines say there is only limited evidence for its effectiveness. It has limited effectiveness in knee OA, but guidelines don’t comment on spine OA,” he added. Surgery such as a spinal fusion, which fuses two or more vertebrae together in your spine permanently, are typically done for severe spinal arthritis causing deformity or for scoliosis, cited Dr. Kirschner.

Read the full article at Creakyjoints.org.

"ILS offers a durable, minimally invasive technique to improve clinical outcomes over the classical standard of decompression,” noted Dr. Abjornson. "Similar to an instrumented fusion, ILS provides sustained relief of the neural elements, however it also offers motion preservation that can have significant benefits to the global spinal segment," she added.

In a post-hoc analysis of data from the IDE trial, Dr. Abjornson and colleagues studied patients with moderate lumbar stenosis who had been randomized 2:1 to decompression with ILS or with posterolateral fusion with bilateral pedicle screw instrumentation. Overall, 215 patients had ILS (including 84 who were at least 65 years old) and 107 had fusion (including 57 who were aged 65 or older). Preoperatively all had reported significant pain and disability. They were assessed before and six weeks after surgery and at intervals of up to 60 months. At 24 and 60 months, there were no significant differences in measures of overall clinical success across groups. This was also true of radiographic findings and postoperative narcotic usage. Moreover, there were no statistically significant differences regarding patient satisfaction and patient recommendation of the same treatment. However, older patients who underwent ILS rather than fusion had a shorter mean operative time (100 vs. 153 minutes), a lower estimated mean blood loss (106 vs. 358 cc) and a shorter mean hospital stay (2.07 vs. 3.30 days), all significant differences. When compared with the younger ILS patients, the older ILS group had a significantly longer mean hospital stay, but there were no significant differences in mean operative time or estimated blood loss.

Read the full article at MDalert.com.

NJ.com spoke to Andrew A. Sama, MD, co-chief of HSS Spine, who did not treat Paxton, but commented on the recovery from this type of procedure. “If the thing that’s slowing someone down is – this cyst or disc or whatever it is pressing on a nerve – and that offending agent is removed, then once they heal from the surgery, theoretically, they should be good to go,” said Dr. Sama. “Now there is a possibility that the cyst or the disc or whatever it is can come back, but that’s pretty rare. It’s less than 3-4 percent.”

Dr. Sama concluded this injury is common. “They happen to moms and dads and just people going through their regular daily lives,” he said. “And then you think about how much of a demand professional athletes, especially a thrower like Paxton, put on their bodies, especially in the lower part of the back, and you can understand how something can happen like this mechanically.”

Read the article at NJ.com.