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now we're going to look at a cervical spine MRI
of a patient with arm pain
the patient doesn't have much neck pain
and he has no spinal cord dysfunction
in this MRI again you can see the spinal cord in the center
surrounded by the white cerebral spinal fluid or water
and the vetrebral bodies and the discs
you can see a small disc bulge here and smaller disc bulges here and here
since there's no real compression of the spinal cord the patient has no spinal
cord dysfunction symptoms
but if we do come to the right side we can see these spurs that are compressing
out of the canal at these two levels and those are the spurs that are catching
the nerve root on the right
we can look at it from the top down view
and we come up to the first level at C two three again spinal cord is
clear the white
csf water around it these are the nerve exit polls here in here the
C two three level looks normal
we march down to the C three four level
and again spinal cord has room the nerve holes have room this one is a a little
tight but it still has plenty of room
come down to C four five again
the nerve holes are free the spinal cord is free
come down to C five six
and here we see a nice big spur on the right side
the left nerve root is exiting quite nicely
the right nerve root here is compressed by the spur and this is one of the spurs
causing this patient right arm pain
we can pass by this level and go to the next level at six seven and again see
the same thing the left nerve hole is free there's a big spur on the right
nerve hole and this nerve is compressed and this is what's causing him the arm
pain from the C seven nerve
this is a side by side example
of a normal
level of the cervical spine and a level where there's nerve compression
again we noted before this nice large spur is compressing the exiting nerve
route right here where the nerve root on the opposite side is open
here we can see again the vertebral body the spinal cord where both
nerve roots are free and clear and there's no compression and either
foramen so in this particular case this spur is what's causing this patient's
neck pain and arm pain