OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of different causes of neck pain in a private practice clinic. DESIGN A retrospective audit of records. SETTING A private spine pain clinic in the state of Washington, USA. PATIENTS All consecutive patients, seen between January 2003 and January 2005, in whom a diagnosis of neck pain was made. Interventions. The records of all patients were examined t...

A preliminary report of clinical study revealed that chronic discogenic low back pain could be treated by intradiscal methylene blue (MB) injection. We investigated the effect of intradiscal MB injection for the treatment of chronic discogenic low back pain in a randomized placebo-controlled trial. We recruited 136 patients who were found potentially eligible after clinical examination and 72 b...

Internal disc disruption is a syndrome of traumatically induced low-back pain arising from the intervertebral disc. The diagnosis is confirmed by abnormal discography with concordant pain reproduction at the affected level or levels. Thirty-four patients with internal disc disruption at one level were followed for an average of 29 months. Eighteen (53%) underwent anterior lumbar fusion at the L...

PURPOSE Bupivacaine is commonly used for the treatment of back pain and the diagnosis of its origin. Nonunion is sometimes observed after spinal fusion surgery; however, whether the nonunion causes pain is controversial. In the current study, we aimed to detect painful nonunion by injecting bupivacaine into the disc space of patients with nonunion after anterior lumbar interbody fusion (ALIF) s...

Back pain is a prevalent condition affecting much of the population at one time or the other. Complications, including neurological ones, can result from missed or mismanaged spinal abnormalities. These complications often result in serious patient injury and require more medical treatment. Correct diagnosis enables more effective, often less costly treatment methods. Current diagnosis technolo...