What Causes lower back pain?

Well, the actual cause of lower back pain is unknown, but it's more important to rule out the more serious things that can give rise to back problems such as cancers, infections, inflammatory problems, and even trauma. A lot of the time, people present with back problems to the specialist, and it's crucial that the more serious problems are ruled out first.

When Is Lower Back Pain Is A Serious Cause For Your Concern?

Well, there are certain features which will give rise to concern, features to do with age. So if you have a patient who's over the age of 50 or an individual who's under the age of 20, there are other features that have associated with the type of pain. So if you have unremitting pain that disturbs sleep, which interferes with normal daily activities, then that is a cause for concern. There are also other features like associated weight loss. If you have patients who've had a past history of cancer or on medications such as steroids or have even had fractures in the past, these sorts of things would tend to raise the alarm bells. And these types of patients must be investigated thoroughly.

What Treatments Are Available?

So after excluding the more serious causes of lower back pain than we start with simple measures such as encouraging people to remain as active as possible, some patients would benefit from physiotherapy, which will take different forms in terms of engagements, usually as a preliminary treatment. Patients have shown exercises to do themselves and then are given leaflets to take home. If that doesn't work, then the physiotherapist often becomes more involved, taking the patients through exercise sessions on a regular basis. And then we then move on to more invasive treatments, if you like, such as injections. If there is such a case when back pain is associated with leg symptoms as well. So-called cortical injections can be used to treat pain.

And it is then important for those patients who may have had pain going on for a while and it's starting to interfere with not just their own personal space, but also other aspects of their day to day life, such as work resulting in time off work or time away from friends because they're not able to go out there. No more combined approach where not only do they go through physical therapy, but then you also add in psychological treatments to help them learn to develop coping strategies to deal with their back pain.  And if you want then you can try in the background, there's also the use of simple over-the-counter medications such as paracetamol, anti-inflammatory tablets to help to control the pain while the patient gets on with their normal daily activities as best they can.

When Is Surgery Necessary For Lower Back Pain?

So sometimes you can have a situation where a patient had back to back pain for a while in association with leg pain, secondary to a disc herniation or a slipped disc if you like. And in very rare circumstances, this can present as an emergency where the nerve supply to the bowels and the bladder is a risk. And in this kind of situation surgery is necessary. But the surgery is really to do with the leg symptoms and also to preserve the patient's bowel and bladder function and prevent long term disability. There also might have other instances where a person can have mechanical back pain due to developmental problems with the spine that can then go on to cause leg symptoms as well. So in these sorts of instances, surgery is appropriate to deal with the mechanical problems around the spine and also to address the leg symptoms at the same time. And this is usually done with a procedure that's called spinal fusion. And nowadays the fusion process is facilitated by using metalwork and in simple terms, scaffolding. On the spine to not only provide stability but then to help the spine, to refuse to help with the pain.

You can also read the article about knee pain