If you roll your ankle while you’re walking the dog, it’s pretty easy to determine that you likely suffered some minor ligament damage when you sprained your ankle. Sometimes injuries are pretty easy to self diagnose, while other times you may have no idea what’s causing your discomfort. The latter is commonly true for injuries to your back.
But why are spine and neck injuries oftentimes so hard to correctly self diagnose? We take a closer look at some of the reasons why back injuries can be hard to self diagnose in today’s blog.
The Difficulty Of A Self Diagnosis
Here’s a look at some of the common reasons why coming up with an accurate self diagnosis of your spine pain can oftentimes be difficult to achieve.
- The Spine Is Complex – Your spine is incredibly complex, with a number of key structures in close relation to one another. You have key spinal nerves passing nearby discs, vertebrae and spinal joints, and that doesn’t even account for other soft tissues in the area like ligaments, tendons and cartilage. Damage to any of these structures can lead to discomfort, so without professional insight, it can be hard to know which of the many structures in the area is the source of your pain.
- Similar Symptoms – Another factor that can make it hard to figure out what’s going on in your spine without a professional evaluation is that many spine conditions present with similar symptoms. It’s not uncommon for back issues to present with localized or shooting pain, stiffness, swelling and discomfort that worsens with movement. Even your spine specialist will have a difficult time figuring out what’s going on in your spine just by listening to your description of symptoms.
- Subjective Nature Of Pain – Pain is highly subjective , so what is a 7 out of 10 on the pain scale for one person is a 4 out of 10 for someone else, and back injuries can present with different levels of pain. Depending on how irritated a spinal nerve is or how fully a spinal disc herniates, your pain levels may fluctuate significantly, making it hard to tell just how serious your spinal injury is.
- Similar Mechanism Of Injury – Not only are symptoms oftentimes similar, but so too is the underlying mechanism of injury. For example, many common spinal issues develop as a result of acute or repetitive stress being placed on the spine. That’s why so many spine injuries are the result of twisting, bending or lifting a heavy object that overloads the spine. And just like with symptoms, it’s not going to be easy to figure out what’s going on in your spine just by looking at the way in which your back injury developed.
In all, it really does take a trained eye to look at the totality of the information in order to figure out exactly what’s causing discomfort in your spine. When Dr. Sinicropi is working on a diagnosis, he sits down with a patient, reviews their chart, asks them about the incident and what symptoms they are experiencing. From there, he may have them perform some simple movement tests as part of a physical examination to see how the body responds to different movements and stress. Finally, he may order imaging tests of a specific area of your spine to get an inside look at the bones or soft tissues in the area.
Together, he will use all this information to not only figure out what’s going on in your spine, but to develop an individualized treatment plan to help you overcome your injury. To experience this level of care firsthand, reach out to Dr. Sincropi and the team at The Midwest Spine & Brain Institute today at (651) 430-3800.
