2008 Author: Alan Gardner FRCS

A question from a member of BackCare who has been unable to get to the source of all their symptoms.

Question

I am a member of BackCare, aged 31 and have suffered with a bad back for nearly two and a half years. I haven’t been able to get to the source of all my symptoms yet, even though I have seen two spinal consultants, had two MRI’s and seen an osteopath. Please can you give me some guidance as to why I may feel some of the currently unexplained symptoms and if the surgery option that has been recommended may help to eliminate this symptom.

I started getting leg pain and numbness about two and a half years ago (no significant activity brought this on just one week I was normal the next I had mild leg pain). After a number of visits to the doctor I got an appointment with a spinal consultant (nine months after the initial onset) who sent me for an MRI scan which showed a dehydrated disc at L4-L5 and three discs in the thoracic region with endplate damaged from Scheuermann’s disease as an adolescent (the latter is not something I knew of until the scan and something the consultant did not seem to be too concerned about).

It was a couple of months prior to this appointment (seven months after the initial onset) that I started to get some abdominal pain like a stabbing pain at the right hand side near my belly button when I had walked around for too long so I also mentioned this pain when I saw the consultant. I then underwent a discogram at L4-L5 which showed a significant ‘tear’ on the right hand side of the disc and the liquid dye inserted leaked out rapidly causing a pain response with a high score concordant for the right lumbosacral pain and presumably explains the leg numbness pretty easily and why the disc was dehydrated. For a couple of weeks after this procedure my abdominal pain increased in intensity and frequency to the point where I felt like I was being winded every couple of minutes and had to sit down to stop it from happening.

I did visit the doctor for the abdominal pain. He diagnosed me with gastritis from overuse of NAIDS and said that the cortisone injection during the discogram had made it worse. The tablets prescribed did not take the pain away. The abdominal pain was then investigated in detail but the ultrasounds were clear.

Continuing pain promoted me to go back to a spinal consultant in my new location of Manchester. He has taken another MRI that has shown no more issues than my previous one. He did say the disc height is less than it should be at that level and this disc is what would be causing my leg pain and numbness and hip pain. He cannot biologically link my abdomen pain with the L4-L5 disc issue directly, as the nerves that lead to the stomach come from discs higher up, but did say the reaction I had to the discogram (the abdomen pain) could indicate that the two are related. He also did not seem to be concerned abou...

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