What Conditions Reduce the Width of Your Spinal Column
Posted on Mar 22, 2016 10:30am PDT
The width of your spinal column might not be a major concern for you—unless
of course, it causes persistent back pain, numbness, weakness, mobility
impairment, and other serious symptoms. These symptoms may arise as a result of
spinal stenosis, which is a term for the narrowing of the spinal canal. A narrow spinal
canal can compress the delicate spinal cord. If you have stenosis of the
spine and live near Miami, an orthopedist at a spine center can look for
an underlying cause.
Sometimes, spinal stenosis is congenital, which means that it was present
at birth. In most cases; however, there is another problem that has led
to stenosis. The orthopedist may determine that you have abnormally thickened
ligaments or spinal tumors. Bone spurs, which are overgrowths of the bone,
can sometimes press into the spinal cord. Another common culprit of stenosis
is disc herniation, which occurs when the material on the inside of an
intervertebral disc protrudes outward and compresses nearby structures.
