MRI result
 

I am new to this site and have a question about my MRI result. For about the last month I have been in horrible pain. Lower back-radiating down left leg with numbness in my thigh and pain in my knee. I spoke with my physician who ordered the MRI with the following results:
Abnormal extradural mass at the posterior lower L3 vertebral level which has peripheral enhancement. This is most consistent with a migrated and probably sequestrated disc fragment arising from the L3-4 level causing left lateral recess stenosis, deformity of the thecal sac and probable left L4 nerve root displacement. Follow up study in 2-3 months may be useful to document that this either remains stable or decreases in size and to rule out the possibility that this actually represents a neoplastic or other mass.
Broad base posterior disc protrusion at the T11-12 disc, mild posterior disc bulge at the T12-L1 disc, broad-base posterior disc bulge or protrusion at the L4-5 level and broad-base posterior disc extrusion a the L-5-S1 level.
Could someone explain this to me in a way I can understand.
Thanks!

Wish I could help....
 

but it sounds a little jumbled to me.....a lay person.

I have a mass - now known to be a Lipoma tumor. They are benign, and some or operable and some not so much so because of nerve entanglement.

Mine is fairly big and I can feel it.

I know these can appear all up and down the spine, so child, I do not know what's he's talking about. Ask Doc for ENGLISH about that. Nothing to fool around with or be worried about for sure, so you need to know.

Neil Diamond had a huge one removed off his spine in 1979......something like 10 hour surgery, and he had to learn to walk all over again, yada yada...but they had told him going in that he could die on the table........wierd huh.

Not to scare you........you just need to know for sure what he's talking about.....TIME down the road is NOT on your side if it's not a benign mass.

Look up lipoma tumor mass and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Blessings and let us know OK.

I have a website that might help ya figure out all the medspeak in the mri findings. It has all the terminology explained as well as great diagrams explaining what does what and why. I hope this helps.
:winky:

http://www.chirogeek.com/index.htm

Sorry I cannot tell you what the physician meant as I do not understand the terminology but your symptoms sound like you have a bit of sciatica which could be caused by what they have seen on the MRI.

Hope you find out what it means. You could ask your physician to talk you through it without the terminology as this may help. Good luck. :)