What is Lumbago and How Is It Treated?

Category: Back Pain | Author: Stefano Sinicropi

lumbago treatments

If your back feels like it’s in limbo, you may have lumbago. It may not be a term used too often in the spine care world, but lumbago is used as an umbrella term to describe any back pain that is mild to severe in nature. Any of the following conditions would fall under the greater health condition defined as lumbago:

  • Herniated or degenerative discs
  • Osteoarthritis or Spondylosis
  • Scoliosis
  • Spinal stenosis
  • Spinal tumor
  • Acute spinal trauma
  • Sacroiliitis

Symptoms and Treatment of Lumbago

As you may have guessed, because lumbago is viewed as a collective term for any type of back pain, there are tens if not hundreds of symptoms that could be a direct result of back pain. We’re not going to list all the potential symptoms associated with all the above conditions, but lumbago can also be broken down into two different types of symptom prevalence.

  • Axial Lumbago Pain – This type of back pain is confined to the back and its related structures. In other words, axial lumbago pain is pain that remains in the neck and spine and doesn’t radiate to the arms or legs.
  • Radicular Lumbago Pain – On the flip side, radicular lumbago pain is pain that occurs elsewhere in the body due to a spinal problem. The most obvious type of radicular lumbago pain is the condition sciatica, in which a nerve in the lower spine becomes compressed leading to painful sensations in a person’s legs.

Treating either axial or radicular lumbago pain comes down to treating the underlying issue. A doctor wouldn’t attempt to prevent the pain caused by sciatica, they would attempt to decompress the nerve that is the source of the pain. The same ideology can be applied to any type of lumbago pain. Treating the cause is always preferred to treating the symptoms.

For more information on lumbago conditions, click here or here, or just continue to poke around on our site!

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