Is Your Back Pain a Medical Emergency?

Approximately 80 percent of Americans will suffer from some form of back pain in their lifetime, according to a recent study in Neurology Today. About 50 percent of those will suffer one or more recurrences and 10 percent will at some point be candidates for surgical intervention. Far fewer are those who fall under the category of “medical emergency” in which failure to have surgery would result in permanent neurological impairment.

Thankfully, the majority of cases respond favorably to conservative care such as chiropractic manipulation, therapeutic rehabilitation and/or anti-inflammatory medication. Rarely does back pain become a medical emergency, however, there are cases where more aggressive treatment should not be avoided or delayed.

Although such patients make up a small portion of back pain cases, there are warning signs that indicate the presence of more complicated back pain. Listening to these 5 signals from your body can save you pain, time and distress if recognized and acted upon quickly.

Numbness and tingling are common symptoms which are classified as “paresthesias”. A paresthesia simply means abnormal sensation in a body part. In the case of back pain, paresthesias are associated with nerve compression or irritation and the pattern of the sensory change, usually along an arm or a leg, helps identify where the nerve is being affected. For this reason, thorough examinations can be just as accurate as MRIs in determining where the problem lies. Numbness and tingling are the least significant symptoms in terms of being medical emergencies and more often than not resolve with conservative care.