Years of back pain – this is how a specialist finds the cause

When I met the woman, she had suffered from severe back pain for 15 years. The early 40-year-old seemed kinked. She reported that she had gone through everything you could go through with back pain as a patient. She told her story: Several X-ray and nuclear spin examinations had shown that her lumbar spine was very worn out, i.e. changed degeneratively.

She got physiotherapy and pain relievers, she was operated on the intervertebral discs twice and was in rehab for a long time. The pain in the lower back remained. The patient looked for help in psychosomatics, received psychotropic drugs, received antidepressants. But the creeping downward spiral of pain, medication and therapies continued.

In a magazine, the woman came across a medical history that resembled her own. The patient described had also experienced a physician, only the cause of pain was different: the trigger was the iliosacral joint, called ISG for short. The woman turned to the experts quoted – that was me. Now she was sitting in front of me with a folder with medical reports and findings. I examined her. The pain did not match the diagnoses described so far such as herniated disc, root irritation, wear of the vertebral bodies, an osteochondrosis. She had more of a “joint pain”. I was heard when she said that the whole misery had suddenly started after the birth of the second child.