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Occasional back pain is a common problem, and most occurrences stem from normal stresses and strains or from degenerative changes that come with aging. But sometimes the cause may be a spinal tumor - a cancerous or noncancerous growth that develops within or near the spinal cord or in the bones of the spine.
The case with the spinal cord, where a spinal tumor or a growth of any kind can impinge on nerves, leading to pain, neurological problems and sometimes paralysis.
Back pain, especially in the middle or lower back, is the most frequent symptom of both noncancerous (benign) and cancerous (malignant) spinal tumors. The pain may be worse at night or on awakening. It also may spread beyond your spine to your hips, legs, feet or arms and may become more severe over time in spite of treatment.
Depending on the location and type of tumor, other signs and symptoms can develop, especially as a malignant tumor grows and impinges on your spinal cord or on the nerve roots, blood vessels or bones of your spine. These signs and symptoms include:
Loss of sensation or muscle weakness, especially in your legs
Difficulty walking, sometimes leading to falls
Decreased sensitivity to pain, heat and cold
Loss of bowel or bladder function
Paralysis that may occur in varying degrees and in different parts of your body, depending on which nerves are compressed
Scoliosis or other spinal deformity resulting from a large but benign tumor
Spinal tumors progress at different rates. In general, malignant tumors grow quickly, whereas benign tumors may develop slowly, sometimes existing for years before causing problems.
In most animals, the spine functions as a suspension bridge, but in humans, the "bridge" has been upended and turned into a weight-bearing column. As a result, your spine provides structural support for your body while at the same time allowing flexible movement.
The structure of the spine is complex and includes bones, muscles, cartilage, ligaments, joints and nerves. Of these, the vertebrae and spinal cord are the most important for an understanding of spinal tumors:
Vertebrae. Your spine is made up of 24 small bones stacked on top of one another, plus the sacrum and tailbone (coccyx). Most adults have seven of these bones in the neck (cervical vertebrae), 12 at the back wall of the chest (thoracic vertebrae) and five at the inward curve of the lower back (lumbar vertebrae). The sacrum consists of five fused vertebrae between the hipbones. The tailbone is formed from three to five bones fused at the very end of the spine.
Each vertebra has an opening in the center, much like the hole in a doughnut. Stacked together, the holes form a hollow channel (spinal canal) that encloses and protects the spinal cord and its nerve roots.
Spinal cord. Your spinal cord is a long column of nerve fibers that carries messages to and from your brain. It extends from the base of your skull to the second lumbar vertebra in your lower back. The spinal cord is usually 15 to 17 inches long, but its circumference varies at different points along your spine. At its widest, in the nerve-rich cervical and lumbar areas, it's about the diameter of your thumb.
Structurally, the spinal cord is a double-layered tube: The butterfly-shaped inner layer (gray matter) contains nerve cells, supporting cells called glia and blood vessels. The outer layer is primarily white matter - nerve fibers (axons) that relay sensory information such as pain and temperature from your body to your brain and conduct motor impulses from your brain to your muscles, organs and glands. The axons are bundled into 31 pairs of spinal nerves, with one sensory nerve root and one motor nerve root in each pair. The paired nerves extend out from the spinal cord between each vertebra.
Wrapped around the entire spinal cord are three protective membranes (meninges) made of connective tissue: The innermost membrane is the pia. The arachnoid, so named because of its resemblance to a spider web, lies in the middle. The tough, outer membrane, to which the spinal nerves attach, is the dura.
Types of spinal tumors
Spinal tumors are classified according to their location in the spine.
Extradural (vertebral) tumors.
Intradural-extramedullary tumors.
Intramedullary tumors.
Spinal tumor origins a mystery
They do know that in some cases, spinal cord tumors run in families and are associated with familial cancer syndromes such as:
Neurofibromatosis 2.
Von Hippel-Lindau disease
It's also known that spinal cord lymphomas - cancers that affect lymphocytes, a type of immune cell - are more common in people whose immune systems are compromised by medications or disease.
Both benign and malignant spinal tumors can compress spinal nerves, leading to a loss of movement or sensation below the level of the tumor and sometimes to changes in bowel and bladder function. Nerve damage is often permanent, and disabilities are likely to continue even after the tumor is removed. Depending on its location, a tumor that impinges on the spinal cord itself may be life-threatening.
MEDICAL TREATMENT
Ideally, the goal in treating a spinal tumor is to eliminate the tumor completely, but this aim is complicated by the risk of permanent damage to the surrounding nerves. Doctors also must take into account your age, overall health, the type of tumor and whether it is primary or has spread to the spine.
Treatment options for most spinal tumors include:
Monitoring. Sometimes spinal tumors are discovered before they cause symptoms - often when you're being evaluated for another condition. If small tumors are benign and not growing or pressing on surrounding tissues, watching them carefully may be the only treatment that's needed. This is especially true in older adults for whom surgery or radiation therapy may pose special risks. If you decide not to treat a spinal tumor, your doctor will recommend periodic scans to monitor the tumor's growth.
Surgery. This is often the first step in treating tumors that can be removed with an acceptable risk of nerve damage.
Newer techniques and instruments allow neurosurgeons to reach tumors that were once inaccessible. The high-powered microscopes used in microsurgery, for instance, make it easier to distinguish tumors from healthy tissue. Doctors also can test different nerves during surgery with electrodes, thus minimizing neurological damage. And in some instances, they may use sound waves to break up tumors and remove the remaining fragments.
When a tumor has spread to the spine, radiation is usually the treatment of choice. In these cases, surgery is reserved for people who don't have a diagnosis, who have tumors resistant to radiation or who have recurrent tumors that were previously irradiated. However, some research has shown that some people with metastatic disease to the spine that has caused weakness or other neurological problems may be most effectively treated with a combination of surgery and radiation.
Recovery from spinal surgery may take weeks or months, depending on the procedure, and you may experience a temporary loss of sensation or other complications, including bleeding and damage to nerve tissue.
Radiation therapy. This may be used following an operation to eliminate the remnants of tumors that can't be completely removed or to treat inoperable tumors. It's also often the first-line treatment for metastatic tumors. Radiation may also be used to relieve pain or when surgery poses too great a risk.
Medications can help some of the side effects of radiation, such as nausea and vomiting. And depending on the type of tumor, your doctor may be able to modify your therapy to help prevent damage to surrounding tissue and improve the treatment's effectiveness. Modifications may range from simply changing the dosage of radiation you receive to using sophisticated techniques that offer better protection to healthy tissue, such as 3-D conformal radiation therapy.
Chemotherapy. A standard treatment for many types of cancer, chemotherapy hasn't proved beneficial for most spinal tumors. However, there may be exceptions. Your doctor can determine whether chemotherapy might be beneficial for you, either alone or in combination with radiation therapy.
Other drugs. Because surgery and radiation therapy as well as tumors themselves can cause inflammation inside the spinal cord, doctors sometimes prescribe corticosteroids to reduce the swelling, either following surgery or during radiation treatments. Although corticosteroids reduce inflammation, they are usually used for short periods only to avoid such serious side effects as osteoporosis, high blood pressure, diabetes and an increased susceptibility to infection.
NATURAL HEALING WITHOUT SURGERY
The patient will need to bring all MRI's and X-rays along with Medical Reports
By connecting the nerve, we will relieve the pain and numbness
With the use of our Hi-Tech Energy machine we can shrink the tumor, causing it to become smaller and smaller until it ceases to exist. The technique is very simple and without risk.
