MRI Side View of Spine After Auto Accident

Some spinal injuries do not respond to regular chiropractic care. If this is the case for you, you should try decompression traction therapy

To see if we can help call (360) 260-6903.

 

 

 

 

 


Transcription

Hey, it’s Dr. Troy here, the Vancouver chiropractor.

I have an MRI image I want to go over with you today so you can understand reading MRIs.

Many patients who’ve had an MRI have never really understood what’s on it. They get this report with these big words and they go whatever that means so they just think it’s bad stuff.

This is a patient here there’s a lumbar MRI, this is a side view, and so this is the sacrum down here, this we call this the sacrum s1, s2, it’s fused. This is L5 so the last lumbar vertebra, L4 you can see the vertebra here L3, L2. and L1, is up at the top.

Now the mouse pointer is pointing to what we would consider pretty much a normal disc. You can see the signal intensity is real white through here that’s the disk between L2 and L3. In between L3 and L4 same thing you can see the nice white signal, that means that disc is well hydrated it’s elevated. You’re probably not going to see a lot of nerve root irritation and compression with that segment.

But, as we go down between L4 and L5 you can notice the signal intensity is much darker, it’s not white. On this image, on this MRI the white is indicating water or hydration. So between L4 and L5 and L5 and S1, this one’s even more severe than this, so you have a lot of dark through here we’ve even got some bulging into the space where the spinal cord is going to sit. This indicates a degenerative disc a dehydrated disc. Sometimes you’ll see desiccated discs that’s what that means, it’s dehydrated.

So, with spinal decompression therapy what we want to do is focus. Specifically, we would focus on this segment here between L5 and S1 to help pull that disc apart, to help bring nutrients back into that and help rehydrate that disc.

This patient presenting was in a car accident and he presented with a lot of low back pain, was non remitting with regular chiropractic care, with adjustments and massage. He’s actually responded really well to the decompression traction therapy that we do and we’ve been focusing specifically at this disc at this level and he’s probably got about a 70% reduction in pain in four weeks of care. Pretty successful resolution of reducing the pressure that’s on the surrounding soft tissues with our DRX 9000.

If you’re interested in coming in for consultation, you’ve got back issues, disc issues, we’d be happy to review your MRI with you to see if what we do might be right for you. Call our office (360) 260-6903.