Thread: Mri
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Old 01-24-2018, 07:03 AM
glenntaj glenntaj is offline
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glenntaj glenntaj is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Queens, NY
Posts: 2,855
15 yr Member
Default Whether or not surgery would be indicated--

--will probably be decided by how your symptoms match up to these MRI results, though I imagine that you would not have gone for the MRI if you didn't have some symptoms.

In short, you have significant cervical spine compromise. The shorthand you've listed here indicates that most of it seems to involve the narrowing of the neural foramina, which are the space through which the nerve roots exit the spine on their way to various parts of the body, and this is happening on multiple levels. When these foramina narrow, they limit the space for the nerve roots to pass through, and pressure on the nerve roots can result in all manner of neurologic symptoms--the level at which this happens (C3, C4, etc.) have typical body coverage areas, called dermatomes, at which symptoms can be felt. You do have multiple levels involved, mostly through osteophytic mechanisms, which basically means overgrowth of bone into the foramina--a very common thing to happen as we age, by the way. (My cervical spine is full of them.)

The good thing is that you don't seem to have much in the way of central spinal cord involvement--disc or bone pressure on the spine itself tends to be more serious than pressure on the exiting nerve roots.

The point is, people with very similar imaging findings can have widely divergent symptoms. Some people get severe symptoms with only mild apparent MRI findings, and some with severe MRI findings may have little if any symptoms, and everything in between. The correlation between MRI findings and symptoms is usually the starting point for talking about surgery, and there are other considerations--approach, age, other conditions that may hamper recovery (smoking, obesity, diabetes). Always get a least a few opinions.
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