← Return to flattening of cervical spinal cord from bone spurs

Discussion

flattening of cervical spinal cord from bone spurs

Spine Health | Last Active: Mar 14 4:31pm | Replies (9)
Comment receiving replies
@sb4ca

Hi Jennifer, First, I very much admire your dedication to Mayo Connect. I've been on here before and I've seen this myself. I guess I'm confused here with your response. Did I give bad information? I used the sentence from my MRI to give her a reference point to see if her MRI had calculated the level of stenosis from the bone spur. Is this your concern? I've had 3 cervical fusions myself, one a revision because of MRSA-driven osteomyelitis. ( I have a primary immune deficiency that was not being treated at that time). Given she has no actual nerve compression going through her vertebrae, I was just trying to explain how the osteophyte could impact the cord without any vertebral involvement as I believe that was her question. I am a strict rule follower, so please let me know where I errored even if you need to say it more directly lol.

Jump to this post

Replies to "Hi Jennifer, First, I very much admire your dedication to Mayo Connect. I've been on here..."
Jennifer, Volunteer Mentor | @jenniferhunter | Mar 13 10:10pm

@sb4ca Thank you very much! I do enjoy helping on Connect.

I thought your post was very informative, and It adds valuable information to the conversation. I didn't see the usual "in reply to" note at the top that is usually added automatically by Connect, and I wanted to make sure it would be seen. It also helps others learn how to use Connect with the "@ mention" note in order to send a notification to the person that you intend the post for. These posts are ready by many more people who learn from the dialog and who may never engage in the conversation. I wanted to bring in more information for that reason to help support the information that you posted.

I believe there are ranges of actual measurements that are defined as "moderate", "mild" or "severe" when describing spinal stenosis, but I just don't know what the actual numbers are. When you read a number for spinal canal diameter, and there is no context to compare how different that is from a normal reading, it's hard to interpret what the radiology report means. The Physiopedia page talked about differences in spinal canal sizes between men and women, and also differences in what part of the spinal canal they are describing. I thought that information would help others understand and add to the conversation.

I'm glad to see that you are asking questions to keep the conversation going. That's a good tactic to provide an opportunity for others to participate and something that mentors like to do too. Something I've learned about communications here is that members may understand things differently based on what experiences they have had, and that medical reports can cause anxiety to a patient when their doctors have not explained the context of what that means to them specifically.

Your post also describes what my spine condition was prior to my C5/C6 fusion because I did have a disc osteophyte complex pressing 5 mm into the spinal canal and contacting my spinal cord. I did not have any damage that was visible on the MRI to the spinal cord, and my surgery was done before that happened. I had MRIs that demonstrated that the area of bone spurs doubled within 9 months, and I see that as change happening kind of quickly in my case.

You do have a lot of experience with fusions, and sharing that helps others, so I'm glad you're here!

Were you able to track symptom and imaging changes in your spine prior to spinal fusion surgery?

Jennifer

VIEW AND REPLY