If you keep your head down and play with your phone for a long time, be careful of cervical spondylosis

Cervical spondylosis is a long-term chronic injury, which can even cause dizziness, tinnitus, palpitations and even unsteady walking. Patients with cervical spondylosis have complex symptoms, including neck and back pain, stiffness, numbness and weakness in the limbs, a feeling of walking on cotton, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, etc. In severe cases, they may even experience blurred vision, tachycardia and difficulty swallowing.

With the increasing number of people who spend long periods of time playing with their mobile phones or working at desks, the incidence of cervical spondylosis has continued to rise in recent years, and the age of onset has tended to be younger. The common types include radiculopathy and spinal cord disease.

Many patients are troubled by cervical spondylosis, but they can never find a solution. Cheng Huilin, director of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Zhongda Hospital affiliated to Southeast University, pointed out that we first need to understand what type of cervical spondylosis we have.

There are many types of the disease, but the most important ones are the radiculopathy type and the spinal cord type. Each of these two types has its own characteristics. The radiculopathy type of cervical spondylosis mainly manifests as limb pain, numbness and weakness, pain on one side of the upper limb or the lower limb. If it is the spinal cord type of cervical spondylosis, it mainly manifests as difficulty walking and weakness in the lower limbs. If the disease worsens, walking difficulties, incontinence and even paralysis may occur.

How to check for cervical spondylosis? Cheng Huilin introduced that cervical spondylosis has become more and more common among young people in recent years. If you encounter spinal pain and suspect cervical spondylosis, you need to do further examination. It is unscientific to say that you have cervical spondylosis based on feeling alone. You should choose to do MRI for examination, because cervical MRI examination can not only see bones and intervertebral discs, but also spinal cord and nerves, etc., to exclude many non-cervical spondylosis factors and prevent misdiagnosis. In addition, when the price of CT and MRI is not too different, MRI can get more information and the radiation is relatively small. Therefore, it is recommended to check MRI first.

Generally speaking, the treatment of cervical spondylosis is a step-by-step treatment. When the symptoms are mild at the beginning, no treatment is required. More rest, maintaining a correct posture, and reducing the time of bowing the head should be able to relieve the pain. If the pain symptoms still occur, you can do some massage or take some painkillers, such as drugs to relieve muscle spasms; in terms of traditional Chinese medicine, you can do some acupuncture and physiotherapy, manual massage, etc. It is also effective. If the above treatments are ineffective, then consider whether surgery is needed.

Cheng Huilin pointed out that if non-surgical treatment is ineffective, surgical treatment is needed. Of course, there are different options for surgical treatment. Some choose to operate from the front, directly remove the intervertebral disc, and then place a fixator to relieve spinal cord compression. If the patient has cervical stenosis, surgery can be performed from the back, such as spinal canal decompression or lateral mass screw fixation.

From the perspective of neurosurgery, the technical advantages of anterior cervical spine surgery are relatively large, because the surgery is performed under a microscope, the surgical field of view is very clear, and bleeding can be stopped more efficiently during the operation, and damage to the nerves and spinal cord can be minimized, ensuring the safety of the surgery. With less bleeding and better results, patients can be discharged faster, which greatly improves the quality of life of patients.