Current Tests Cannot Identify Pain of Discogenic Origin
research strongly points to annular tears of the intervertebral disc as a major cause of low back pain. The problem with this is that diagnosing tears is very difficult using modern technology. The author of this study than goes on to infer that the difference between patients with and without LBP is psychological. This wouldn’t be the first time that mainstream medicine has suggested a psychologic origin for pain or symptoms that they did not know how to diagnose. Mainstream medicine has to find a STRUCTURAL problem for disease to be present. One day they will come to realize that FUNCTIONAL problems exist long, long before structural problems arise. Chiropractors have and will continue to do well treating LBP because we don’t keep ourselves limited by typical “Western Medicine” which can be very narrow minded.
The Back Letter 15(6):61,68,69, 2000 The study found that high-intensity zones (HIZs) on MRI scans – even when accompanied by a positive discogram – are not reliable indicators that pain stems from the disc. “For better or for worse, the identification of an annular tear has been one of the main tools used to diagnose the cause of low back pain, and now it looks like it’s a false start in many patients,” said Eugene Carragee, MD, lead author of the new study. Carragee says that he personally believes that annular fissures may be the cause of some forms of low back pain. However, he suggests that what distinguishes self-limiting back pain from severe, disabling low back pain illness may not be physical pathology. “I think that those with annular fissures and low back pain of no consequence may not have different spinal pathology than people with severe low back pain illness,” Carragee suggests. “However, their coping mechanisms, emotional responses, and social circumstances may be very different.”