TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Spine MRI A1 - Song, Samuel A1 - Handwerker, Jason A2 - Tehranzadeh, Jamshid PY - 2016 T2 - Basic Musculoskeletal Imaging AB - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become the examination of choice for imaging the spine and its contents. Although diseases of the spine are very common, clinical syndromes may mimic each other, necessitating imaging such as MRI for diagnosis and patient management. When considering performing and interpreting imaging of the spine, it is important to first understand the clinical context. The most common symptom is back pain. While back pain is epidemic and associated with great disability, back pain without neurologic compromise is usually not an emergency. Fever or history of malignancy should raise suspicion and urgency. Patients with spine disorders may also present with radiculopathy and myelopathy. Radiculopathy results from mechanical compression or irritation of a spinal nerve, often within a lateral recess or neural foramina. This results in specific sensory deficits and muscle group weakness. However, myelopathy is caused by mechanical spinal cord compression or by intrinsic lesions of the spinal cord. Classic symptoms of myelopathy include bladder and bowel incontinence, spasticity, weakness, and ataxia. As the spinal cord has limited healing ability, an acute myelopathy is an emergency and should prompt urgent imaging, preferably with MRI given its superior evaluation of the spinal cord and canal. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/04/19 UR - accessphysiotherapy.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1127377573 ER -