3D spine diagnostics

Why imaging alone is not a diagnosis

Disc bulges, degenerative changes and annular tears are extremely common findings in people with no back pain whatsoever, and their prevalence rises steadily with age. A report listing them is not proof that any of them is causing your symptoms.

The reverse also happens: patients with modest-looking imaging can be severely disabled by a small protrusion sitting in a narrow foramen, or by facet-mediated pain that an MRI describes in one line. Matching the anatomy to the clinical picture is the entire skill.

What the assessment covers

History

Onset, mechanism, what aggravates and relieves it, radiation pattern, effect of sitting versus walking, night pain, previous treatment and its result. For many conditions the history alone narrows the diagnosis to one or two possibilities.

Physical and neurological examination

Segmental mobility, palpation for the pain generator, and a formal neurological screen reflexes, power grading, dermatomal sensation, straight leg raise or Spurling's test. This is what establishes whether a nerve root is genuinely compressed and whether any deficit is stable or progressing.

3D digital imaging and load analysis

Digital radiographic analysis quantifies what the eye estimates: lateral deviation in degrees, loss of cervical or lumbar lordosis against normal ranges, disc height at each level, facet orientation and loading, pelvic obliquity and leg length discrepancy.

Where relevant we assess weight-bearing rather than supine, a lumbar spine imaged lying down understates the deformity that appears the moment a patient stands up.

Gait and postural assessment

How you walk reveals compensations that a static image cannot: stance time asymmetry, reduced hip extension, trunk lean, and the substitution patterns that develop when a segment has been painful for months.

We read your existing scans, not repeat them

Bring every film and report you have, including studies from other hospitals. Recent imaging usually avoids unnecessary repeat radiation and cost, and comparing an older study to a current one often tells us more than either alone. If your imaging predates a material change in your symptoms, or is more than about twelve months old, the consultant may recommend an updated study, with the reason stated.

The conversation at the end

You sit with the consultant and see the findings on screen. That conversation covers four things: what is structurally wrong, whether it explains your symptoms, what our protocol can and cannot change about it, and what the course would involve in sessions, weeks and rupees.

Treatment does not begin the same day unless you choose to proceed. If the assessment shows that surgery is the appropriate route, or that the problem is not musculoskeletal at all, we say so and refer you.