Dr. Stefano Sinicropi, M.D.

Your spinal facet joints serve as the connection between the bones in your spine. These joints also make it easier for your spine to bend and twist, and key nerves pass through these joints as they run from the spinal cord to your extremities. If an issue develops with these facet joints, pain and mobility problems can follow, so it’s important to know how to protect against and treat one of the most common issues with your spinal facet joints, which is arthropathy. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at spinal facet joint arthropathy and how the condition is treated.

What Is Facet Joint Arthropathy?

Spinal facet joint arthropathy occurs when the facet joints begin to degenerate due to factors like acute injury or chronic wear and tear over the years. Most commonly, the degeneration occurs to the protective cartilage in and around the joint that makes movement more fluid. As you can imagine, when this protective cartilage is lost, movement becomes harder and more uncomfortable as bones in the joint can rub against one another.

The most common causes of facet joint arthropathy include:

• Acute Injury – An acute injury can damage this protective cartilage in your facet joints. Common sources of acute facet joint injury are from falls, athletics and car accidents.
• Repetitive Stress – We stress our bodies each and every day, and while this movement strengthens muscles and helps to take stress off our spine, sometimes these repetitive actions can also contribute to normal wear and tear on the joints. Repetitive motions, excessive stress, and poor posture or lifting habits can all slowly wear down our spinal facet joints.
• Osteoarthritis – Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease that leads to a thinning of the protective cartilage in our joints. It tends to be more common in larger joints like your hip or knee, but it can affect the facet joints in your spine.

Because osteoarthritis and natural wear and tear tend to be more common in older adults, facet joint arthropathy is most prevalent in adults over the age of 50, but injury-related arthropathy can affect individuals of all ages. The most common symptoms associated with spinal facet joint arthropathy include back or neck pain, discomfort that worsens when bending, leaning or twisting and stiffness or decreased mobility within the spinal column. These conditions can be present anywhere along the spine, but they are most common in your upper and lower spine.

Diagnosing And Treating Facet Joint Arthropathy

If you are dealing with some of all of the above symptoms and have reason to believe that a spinal joint issue may be to blame, consider setting up an appointment with your primary care physician or a spine specialist. They’ll start off by reviewing your medical history, asking about your symptoms and conducting a brief physical exam. Your doctor will likely want to get a more comprehensive look at your spinal column with the help of a diagnostic imaging test. The most common test is an X-ray, but an MRI or CT scan could also be ordered depending on your specific needs.

If you are diagnosed with facet joint arthropathy, your doctor will walk you through your treatment options. Although movement can be uncomfortable, many of the proposed treatments will involve movement in order to make these actions more comfortable and help you maintain or improve flexibility in the area. Anti-inflammatory medications and posture improvements will help to limit potentially disruptive inflammation, but oftentimes the most helpful treatment techniques involve a combination of:

• Controlled exercise
• Gentle stretching techniques
• Weight loss/Dietary improvements
• Physical therapy

Oftentimes these techniques can help reduce or alleviate symptoms, although they will not help to regrow lost cartilage. If these techniques are unsuccessful at providing relief, or symptoms end up slowly getting worse, surgery may be in the cards. Surgery tends to involve a fusion of one or more of the spinal vertebrae, which limits mobility, but since mobility is oftentimes painful, will help to control symptoms. Surgery tends to be very successful at limiting symptoms, but many patients find that non-operative treatments prove successful, so most can avoid a corrective procedure.

For more information about spinal facet joint arthropathy, or to talk to a specialist about a different spinal issue, reach out to Dr. Sinicropi and the team at the Midwest Spine & Brain Institute today at (651) 430-3800.

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