Dr. Stefano Sinicropi, M.D.

When you’re dealing with a condition like a muscle strain or a bulging disc, there’s a good chance that you can restore your spine to normal health by following a proactive treatment plan or by syncing up with a spine specialist for individualized treatment recommendations. However, when it comes to a condition like arthritis, restoring the body to a pre-injury condition isn’t really possible.

Osteoarthritis involves the degeneration of protective cartilage in the joints, and your body can’t regrow cartilage in the same way that it can produce new bone cells to heal a fractured bone. You aren’t going to turn back the clock and have your spine feeling like it did 30 years ago if you have spinal osteoarthritis, but does that mean you wouldn’t benefit from a consultation with a spinal specialist? In today’s blog, we explain why a spine specialist can give you the upper hand when it comes to effectively caring for your degenerative spinal arthritis.

Professional Spinal Arthritis Treatment

There’s little that can be done to reverse the natural degeneration that occurs with arthritis, but that doesn’t mean treatment is futile. When it comes to professional spinal arthritis management, the goal is often two-fold. We want to work to either slow the progression of arthritis, or stop the progression as best we can for an extended period. Continuing to perform the same actions with little regard for your spine can lead to accelerated degeneration, which only brings on worsening symptoms and more dysfunction.

Your spine specialist will have a better idea of the best ways to manage your spinal osteoarthritis after your initial diagnostic consultation. They’ll begin by asking questions about your back pain, having you perform some simple movements and reviewing your overall medical history. An X-ray or similar medical image may be ordered to confirm the location of the degeneration or to rule out other potential sources of pain. After reviewing your imaging results and understanding all the factors at play, they’ll work with you to come up with a targeted treatment plan. In most cases, that will involve a few of the following treatments:

• Posture Improvements – Talking with the patient about their posture and helping them become more posture aware can help take stress off the spine, limiting symptoms and slowing natural spinal arthritis progression.
• Physical Therapy – PT is a must for anyone dealing with spinal arthritis. Physical therapy will provide relief by strengthening key supportive structures in the spine, taking stress off areas that are feeling the effects of spinal degeneration. When the whole spine is more capable of handling stress, spinal cartilage degeneration slows.
• Exercise – Your doctor will also talk to you about improving your activity levels with specific types of exercise. These low impact exercises will act similar to physical therapy in that they will strengthen your spine so that it’s better able to manage strain throughout the day. When coupled with smart dietary choices, exercise can help you maintain an ideal weight, which can alleviate symptoms and limit the continued progression of spinal osteoarthritis.
• Injections – A slightly more hands-on treatment for spinal arthritis is a spinal injection. A corticosteroid injection or a similar lubrication injection can limit pain sensations and facilitate more comfortable movement in the joint, but know that the effects of these injections will be short lived. Injections may prove effective for weeks or months at a time, but they aren’t a great long-term treatment, so really throw yourself into other treatments while the effects of the injection are at their peak.
• Surgery – Surgeons replace arthritic knees and hips all the time, and the same can be done with a worn and arthritic disc. Your doctor can work to restore lost disc height, fuse two vertebral segments together to limit painful movement or completely replace the worn disc with an artificial component that mimics the function of a healthy spinal disc. You have surgical options to address moderate to severe spinal arthritic degeneration.

Let us help you get a hold of your spinal arthritis symptoms and make movement comfortable once again. For more information on how we can help you manage your new or worsening spine symptoms, connect with Dr. Sinicropi and the team at Midwest Spine & Brain Institute today at (651) 430-3800.

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