@dexkillz Hello and welcome to Connect. I am a spine surgery patient. Other than your diagnosis, did your doctors give you any advice on how to improve your symptoms? Did they connect the swelling of veins in your hands and facial pain to this new diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis?

What is your posture like? I'm asking this because if you have a posture of leaning forward looking at a computer screen or phone, that can contribute to swelling in the hands if you have something like thoracic outlet syndrome. I do have TOS and it can alter blood flow to the arms because the blood supply gets compressed as it travels through the shoulder area between the collar bone and rib cage. Most doctors miss this diagnosis unless you are at an interdisciplinary medical center that treats TOS. That's one of the reasons I came to Mayo because I have TOS and also needed spine surgery for a bad C5/C6 disc and had overlapping symptoms from both problems. Usually TOS is diagnosed by a thoracic vascular surgeon or neurologist. Often treatment is just physical therapy which is what I've been doing, but it takes a long time to improve, and posture is very important.

Here is some technical information on TOS:
https://mskneurology.com/how-truly-treat-thoracic-outlet-syndrome/

With AS, it's also very important to maintain good posture. AS is an inflammatory problem and will cause arthritic bone growth in the spine resulting in the spine fusing itself. If you have poor posture, you can get stuck like that.

With our health, we have dietary choices that can reduce inflammation. This reduces the body's total burden of inflammation if you also have an inflammatory condition. This link from Spine Universe describes dietary changes for AS:

What is your next step in treatment? Has your doctor prescribed any medication or exercises to try to help your condition?

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