Ten diseases and their characteristics that are easily caused by cervical spondylosis
Cervical spondylosis is the most common orthopedic disease, causing many symptoms and spreading throughout the body, so let’s take a look at the ten diseases easily caused by cervical spondylosis and what their characteristics are.
1.Cervicogenic cerebrovascular disease
Of the nearly 1 million cerebrovascular patients in the country each year, 26% are induced by cervical spondylosis. This is due to the compression of the vertebrobasilar artery, resulting in insufficient blood supply to the brain, long-term maintenance of this state, there will be dizziness, numbness of the hands and feet, unstable gait, and even cerebral thrombosis, cerebral infarction, some patients can lead to hemiplegia. If cervical spondylosis is treated in time, it will not deteriorate into serious consequences such as stroke and hemiplegia.
2.Cervicogenic breast pain
Most often seen in middle-aged and elderly women with cervical spondylosis, they start to feel pain in one breast or thoracic muscle, intermittent hidden pain or paroxysmal stabbing pain, which is most obvious when they turn their heads to one side, and sometimes the pain is unbearable. This pain has been misdiagnosed as angina pectoris or pleurisy. It is caused by the compression of the nerves of the 6th and 7th cervical vertebrae by the hyperplastic bone.
3. Cervicogenic vertigo
Some people suffer from “high blood pressure” for a long time, but the last examination was cervical spondylosis. Cervical spondylosis can cause an increase or decrease of blood pressure, but the increase of blood pressure is common. These patients are often accompanied by neck pain, tightness, upper limbs numbness and other symptoms of cervical spondylosis. Generally, treatment for hypertension is not effective, and when the symptoms of cervical spondylosis are controlled, blood pressure decreases. This is related to the malfunction of blood supply to the basilar artery and the stimulation of sympathetic nerves due to cervical spondylosis. Since cervical spondylosis and hypertension are both common in middle-aged and elderly people, there are more chances for the two to coexist.
4. Cervicogenic visual impairment
Some patients with cervical spondylosis first show visual impairment, such as vision loss, intermittent blurred vision, distension and pain in one or both eyes, photophobia, flowing waves, unequal pupil size, or even reduced visual field and vision decrement.
It is characterized by a clear relationship between eye symptoms and changes in neck posture, and some are accompanied by symptoms of cervical spondylosis. Many patients feel that visual impairment occurs when the head and neck are in a particular poor posture for a long time. This visual impairment is related to ischemic lesions of the visual center of the occipital lobe of the brain caused by autonomic dysfunction and insufficient blood supply to the basilar artery due to cervical spondylosis.
5. Cervicogenic angina pectoris
Some people suffer from “angina pectoris”, and general drug treatment is ineffective, should think about whether cervical spondylosis caused by cervicogenic angina. This is because the cervical nerve roots that innervate the diaphragm and pericardium are stimulated and compressed by the cervical vertebrae, or the sympathetic nerves of the heart are stimulated. Patients may present with precordial pain, chest tightness, premature beats and other arrhythmias and ST-segment changes on ECG, which can be easily mistaken for coronary artery disease.
Pain can be induced when pressing the pressure area near the cervical spine, and the symptoms can be aggravated when the head is in a specific position and posture, and alleviated after changing the position, and obvious effects can be received when treated according to cervical spondylosis.
6.Cervicogenic dysphagia
Some patients start to feel itching in the throat and foreign body sensation, and then feel difficulty in swallowing, with intermittent episodes, sometimes light and sometimes heavy. A few of them have nausea, vomiting, hoarseness, dry cough and chest tightness. Many patients had been suspected of esophageal cancer, but gastroscopy was normal. On cervical spine X-ray, the spine is cervical spondylosis, and degenerative changes such as bony bulges protruding forward are evident on lateral cervical spine X-rays.
This is a symptom of esophageal stenosis caused by excessive osteophytes at the anterior edge of the cervical vertebral body and excessive bone superfluity directly compressing the posterior wall of the esophagus, or by spasm or excessive relaxation of the esophagus due to autonomic nerve dysfunction caused by cervical spondylosis. It can also be caused by stimulation of the soft tissues around the esophagus due to the formation of bone spurs.
7. Cervicogenic gastroparesis
After the sympathetic nerves in the neck are stimulated by cervical spurs, degenerated intervertebral discs, and the vertebral spaces that become narrow, the signals pass into the sympathetic network in the skull, into the autonomic center of the hypothalamus, and then along the sympathetic or parasympathetic nerves and then to the internal organs, triggering two phenomena in the stomach.
When the sympathetic nerve is excited, gastrointestinal peristalsis is inhibited, and symptoms such as dry mouth, anorexia, abdominal distension, burping and belching, epigastric vague pain, nausea and vomiting appear; when the parasympathetic nerve excitability is increased, it can cause symptoms similar to peptic ulcer such as increased appetite, acid reflux and heartburn, belching and pain when hungry but relieved after eating. After curing the cervical spondylosis, the stomach symptoms then disappear.
8. Cervicogenic sudden collapse
Sudden collapse is often caused by sudden head twisting while standing or walking, and the body pushes the support force. Such patients may have symptoms of autonomic dysfunction such as dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting and sweating. This is due to the impaired blood supply to the basilar artery caused by the compression of the vertebral artery by the bony mass of the cervical vertebrae, resulting in a severe shortage of cerebral blood supply for a while.
9.Cervicogenic tic disorder
Most often seen in children and adolescents, mainly long-term lying, head tilted, tilted head reading and writing, easy to trigger cervical spondylosis, head tilted to one side, frequent twitching more than one phenomenon. After changing the bad habits and active treatment, the twitching will be discontinued and gradually recovered.
10. Cervicogenic lower limb paralysis or defecation disorder
Lower limb paralysis or defecation disorder is caused by the stimulation of the lateral bundle of the spinal cord. Patients have numbness, pain and limp in the upper extremities, and most of the symptoms in the neck are mild and easily concealed. Some are accompanied by urinary frequency, urinary urgency, urinary incontinence or urinary and fecal incontinence.
Cervical spondylosis not only causes a wide range of disease, the number of, and is showing a trend of “young”! We need to pay attention to it, we should change the bad habits in life as soon as possible, exercise more and take early preventive measures for cervical spondylosis!