Your back MRI does NOT define you
Yes…we said it.
Your MRI does NOT define you because there are a lot of things that can show up on an MRI that don’t actually matter.
How do we know whether they matter or not? By looking at what we find with people that DON’T have any symptoms.
Dr. Waleed Brinjiki and his team conducted a study in 2015 at the Mayo Clinic looking at over 3110 scans of people that DID not have any symptoms, this is what they found(1):
37% of individuals in their 20’s had disc degeneration and these numbers slowly increased to 96% for individuals in their 80’s.(1)
30% of individuals in their 20’s had disc bulge and these numbers once again slowly increased to 84% for individuals in their 80’s.(1)
Other imaging findings that are normally considered pathological or harmful showed up in the asymptomatic population as well such as disc signal loss, disc height loss, disc protrusion, annular fissure, facet degeneration, and spondylolisthesis.(1)
The same goes for disc herniations, there is a paper done by Dr. Sasi Kuppuswamy in Indian. They studied 76 asymptomatic participants, looking at a total of 380 disc, and this is what they saw(2):
273 disc were herniated which is 71.8% of all the disc that they examined.(2)
256 disc had grade 1/2 degenerative changes(67.3%), and 124 disc had grade 3/4 degenerative changes(32.7%)
Read the second bullet one more time and add the numbers…EVERY SINGLE DISC WAS DEGENERATIVE!
This is why our team does not focus so much on the MRI when people come through our doors because the MRIs are picking up findings that come up in people without any pain.
We have heard stories and have helped people who had “significant” findings in their MRI get back to doing the things they love at a high level and the best part is that the MRI did not change.
The MRI can be useful when there are red flag symptoms such as loss of bowel or bladder function, progressive worsening of neuro symptoms, and more but once you clear those things out with an appropriate exam then the focus needs to be on function.
The best part about that?
We don’t need an MRI to change in order to see a change in your function.
If you’re experiencing back pain and want to know more about our approach then click here to schedule a free discovery call.
We would love to get to know you better and see if you're the right fit for what we do.
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