Is it Cervical Kyphosis?

@emyt Hello and welcome. I see this is your first post. Is the doctor who called this minor you primary care doctor?

I am a spine surgery patient. Your cervical spine should have a backward curve that they call lordosis or a lordotic curve. If the spine is bent forward, they do call this kyphosis. What's more important is the reason that the curve has been changed. What I see in your X-ray is that some of the vertebrae are a bit forward and not lined up in a lordotic curve. If you look at the first 2 starting at the skull, you can see that they do follow a backward curve, and then the spine straightens and this can happen from muscle spasms. If you look lower down right above the ribs, you'll see where it kind of hinges and bends forward. Look at the disc height between the vertebrae. Lower down, disc height looks smaller. These lower levels are most often injured in a whiplash injury. Over time with aging, discs get compressed a bit.

When you have a neck pulled out of normal alignment, it puts uneven pressure on the discs. Discs may bulge and if there was an injury such as a whiplash, the discs may have small cracks in the outer fibrous layer. With aging, discs naturally dry out a bit and the cracks can further weaken the disc and open up. That is what happened to me, and my C5/C6 disc ruptured about 20 years after a whiplash. The inside is called the nucleus propulsus and is a jelly like substance. If that spills out, it causes inflammation, and there are usually bone spurs that grow near a ruptured disc. Uneven pressure causes bone growth too. In my case, the disc ruptured inside the spinal canal and my spinal cord was getting compressed with a disc osteophyte complex (bone spurs). I had fusion surgery called an ACDF that removed all the bone spurs and the C5/C6 disc.

Posture is very important to prevent spine problems from getting worse because bad posture increases pressure on the spine. Core strength helps a lot too because it gives support to the entire spine. What you may want to do is to be proactive about this and ask for physical therapy. I think doctors think in terms of intervention when a condition is bad, but the years in between can affect how bad something becomes. With spine issues, it is best to put off surgery as long as you can because surgery is always a compromise and it can affect other levels of the spine when a level or levels can no longer move.

What are your concerns? Did you get enough answers from your doctor?