Arthritis of the Spine

Arthritis is the common term used to describe pathological changes of joints and adjoining parts of the bone. Several types of arthritis commonly affect the spine. Osteoarthritis, a non-inflammatory type of arthritis, most often affects the cervical spine and the lumbar spine. Neck pain, limited neck and head motion, low back pain, and limited flexibility of the low back can result from progressive joint damage. Degeneration of the intervertebral disk may accompany cervical and lumbar osteoarthritis, and can cause either nerve root or spinal cord compression. Ankylosing spondylitis is the most common inflammatory arthritis that principally affects the spine rather than other joints, and is characterized by slow development of bony fusion among the adjacent vertebrae. Rheumatoid arthritis, the most common type of inflammatory arthritis, affects mostly the limb joints but can also affect the cervical spine, causing neck pain and headache. Cervical spine arthritis also often occurs in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Radiography is an essential diagnostic tool in the evaluation of patients with spinal arthritis, but provides limited information on the posterior spinal structures. Magnetic resonance imaging can be useful for defining abnormalities in the posterior spinal joints, the nerve roots, and the spinal cord. This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, National Institutes of Health. R. Wang M.M. Ward (&) Intramural Research Program, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases/National Institutes of Health, Building 10 CRC, Room 4-1339, 10 Center Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 S. Li and J. Yao (eds.), Spinal Imaging and Image Analysis, Lecture Notes in Computational Vision and Biomechanics 18, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-12508-4_2 31