Dresden, July 27: It hit Elke Kaufer hard and unexpectedly. When the 38-year-old Dresden resident tried to lift her son last year, she felt a stabbing pain in her back. “It was terrible,” she recalled. “I could hardly move.”
Kaufer’s family doctor suspected a slipped disc, the common name for the medical terms “prolapsed” or “herniated” disc. He referred her to a radiologist, who determined with a computed tomography scan and magnet resonance imaging that Kaufer indeed had a slipped disc in her lumbar spine (lower back).
Back pain is widespread. “Eighty percent of all Germans are treated for back problems at least once in their lifetime,” noted Martin Marianowicz, an orthopaedic surgeon in Munich and chairman of the German section of the Texas-based World Institute of Pain.
Back pain can have many causes, with a slipped disc being responsible in only 10 per cent of the cases, Marianowicz said. So a careful diagnosis is important.
The spine is generally very strong and can withstand a lot of pressure. The same is true of the 23 intervertebral discs. Circular pads of fibrocartilage, they lie between the separate bones of the spine (vertebrae) and act as shock absorbers.
As a person ages, the discs degenerate. Each has a tough, fibrous case that can become friable, like a bicycle inner tube. A slipped disc occurs when the case ruptures and the jelly-like nucleus of the disc protrudes into the surrounding tissue.
“A slipped disc is a perfectly natural consequence of the degeneration of our spine,” said Nils Graf Stenbock-Fermor, chairman of the German Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons (DOV). “Just about everybody over 30 years of age has had one.”
Not every slipped disc is painful, however. “It depends on where the disc nucleus protrudes,” Stenbock-Fermor explained. If it presses on a nerve or the spinal cord, pain can be severe, he said. Pain can also spread to a leg because of pressure on a nerve root.
The pain can persist for a week – or for up to two years. But there is no reason to panic. “The body heals itself. Ninety-five per cent of a slipped disc consists of water, which over time is dispersed,” Stenbock-Fermor explained.
Until it is, most patients can be helped with anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving medications as well as with physical therapy, remarked Bettina Zieseniss, a pain therapist in Hamburg.
Exercise is also a key to a speedy recovery. Stenbock-Fermor advises patients to take regular walks as soon as possible and to engage in sports that are gentle on the joints. And he recommends a workout programme with gym equipment to strengthen the muscles of the back. Only they, he said, could protect the spinal nerves and intervertebral discs.
An operation is rarely necessary. “A slipped disc requires an operation only if there is measurable damage to nerves that manifests itself, for example, in numbness or difficulty in urinating,” Marianowicz said, adding that just four per cent of all patients fell into this category.
—-Agencies