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It’s difficult to attaining an accurate diagnosis because spinal stenosis shares many common symptoms linked to other conditions. The most common symptom of lumbar spinal stenosis is leg pain and is often referred to as sciatic pain. Along with leg pain, there will often be a presence of lower back pain, numbness or tingling sensations in the leg and limitations in walking abilities.
Signs of Spinal Stenosis
Leg pain from walking is one of the more common symptoms of spinal stenosis, but may also indication an arterial circulatory insufficiency. Rest will help to ease leg pain from either condition but a tell-tale sign of spinal stenosis is that the patient will usually have to sit down for a few minutes to feel relief from the pain. In patients affected by vascular claudication, the act of simply stopping walking will provide relief from the pain.
Generally speaking, symptoms of spinal stenosis develop over the course of several years, occasionally becoming acute. In most people suffering from spinal stenosis, their leg pain will worsen the longer they stand or walk. The most common way to relieve leg pain and other spinal stenosis symptoms is flexing forward or sitting. Pain from spinal stenosis will often recur when you resume an upright posture. Numbness and tingling sensations often accompany spinal stenosis pain and may be accompanied by muscular weakness in some cases. If you have seen someone leaning over the handle of their shopping cart while making short stumbling steps, it is a sign that that person most likely suffers from spinal stenosis.
Spinal stenosis symptoms list
- Spinal stenosis develops slowly over time.
- Most often the pain comes and goes and is not acute.
- Walking and standing upright often triggers spinal stenosis symptoms.
- Painful symptoms can be relieved by rest, either sitting or lying down. Flexing yourself forward also helps to provide relief.
Either a MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) or a CT (Computed tomography) scan with myelogram (injected x-ray dye in the spinal fluid sack) imaging is used to diagnose spinal stenosis. When diagnosing spinal stenosis, a CT scan will usually only provide useful information if it is preformed using very fine segmental scan slices.
Spinal stenosis has a dynamic effect on nerve compression. This in short means that when bearing weight on the affected area there will be symptoms, but there will be no symptoms when the pressure is relieved. Because of this changing compression, physical examinations will generally not show any problems or motor weakness. There are some recent scanning methods that allow for studying the effects of spinal loading on the upright body position.
Foraminal Stenosis: The most common way to pinpointed foraminal stenosis is with a CT or MRI scan, but for patients who don’t have access to these devices, selective nerve blocking may also be performed to determine the location of stenosis. This is done by injecting the suspected nerve with a small amount of local anesthetic and if successful, there will be a remission of the spinal stenosis symptoms. Once clinically diagnosed the patient will be more informed and can make a better decision on the possibility of surgery.
There are many ways to approach the treatment of spinal stenosis. For more detailed information on this subject, please see our spinal stenosis treatment page.