Is this coming from my spine?

Most people who end up here have already been somewhere else. Often several somewheres. They have had the scan, they have had the bloods, they have been told everything looks normal, and they still feel exactly the way they felt before anybody looked.

That is a genuinely difficult position, and it is not evidence that nothing is wrong. It is often evidence that the thing which is wrong does not show up in the state the body was in when it was measured.

Why a normal scan is not always a complete answer

Almost all standard imaging is taken with you lying still, or standing still, in one position, for one moment. That is the right way to look for the things it is designed to find. Fractures, tumours, large disc herniations, structural damage that is present whether you are moving or not.

But a joint that holds perfectly well at rest and gives way under load looks entirely normal at rest. That is not a failure of the radiologist. It is a property of the question that was asked.

What we can look at instead

Digital Motion X-Ray records your spine on video while it moves, so we can watch how each segment behaves through its range rather than inferring it from a still.

Diagnostic ultrasound, performed with you lying down, seated and standing, because some findings only appear in one of those positions and disappear in the others.

Neither of these is a better scan than an MRI. They are a different question. If your symptoms change when you move, when you look down, when you stand up, or as the day goes on, then a picture of you holding still was never going to be the whole story.

Start with where your symptoms actually are

These pages walk through what is known about each pattern, what structures are involved, and what would need to be looked at to find out. None of them will tell you what you have. A short questionnaire on a website cannot diagnose anybody and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

And if it is not your spine

Sometimes it is not, and we would rather you found that out from us quickly than found it out slowly and expensively. Some cases need surgical evaluation or a different specialist. If yours does, Dr. Hutcheson will tell you that and help point you toward the right care.