When it comes to cervical spondylosis, people tend to think of neck pain, shoulder pain, and numbness in the arms. In fact, different types of cervical spondylosis, its performance is also different. There is such a kind of cervical spondylosis, its power is growing year by year, and especially “preference” to young and middle-aged people. Those who are targeted by this cervical spondylosis often experience “atypical” symptoms such as palpitation, chest tightness, tinnitus, sore eyes, memory loss, and mad sweating, and are even misdiagnosed as mental diseases. Today, a pain doctor will reveal the secret of this relatively “niche” cervical spondylosis.
Case playback: The strange disease that plagued Auntie Zhang
Auntie Zhang, 58, suffered from a strange disease for many years. At first, it was just a tinnitus after a very bad mood. Later, Aunt Zhang often felt slight pain in the neck and shoulder muscles, slight numbness in her hands, and bulging eyeballs. After a long massage, it did not improve much. Afterwards, he often suffers from nausea, loss of appetite, and severe swallowing discomfort (feeling of a foreign body, which is very uncomfortable), sometimes accompanied by tears and palpitation. Gradually, stuffiness, dizziness, headache, chills, hunger, and difficulty breathing appeared in the precordial area. This strange disease made Aunt Zhang dizzy, nauseous, irritable, sleepless, sweating in bursts, her clothes were often soaked, and she caught colds again and again. Therefore, no matter how hot it is, she has to cover herself tightly.
But Aunt Zhang went to the hospital for many times to check from beginning to end. Except for a little pneumonia and high blood lipids, there was no other abnormality. After repeated 24-hour dynamic electrocardiogram, there was no serious abnormality. In the end, she was prescribed “autonomic nervous disorder, depression, anxiety disorder” by the hospital and prescribed medication for depression and anxiety. But after eating for a while, Aunt Zhang’s problem has not been solved, which has seriously affected work and life.
Speaking of this, who would have thought that Aunt Zhang suffered from a cervical spondylosis.
This type of cervical spondylosis prefers middle-aged and young people.
However, it is different from the nerve root type and cervical type cervical spondylosis that we often see with neck pain, shoulder pain, and arm numbness. Similarly, Aunt Zhang’s cervical spondylosis is a relatively rare type – sympathetic cervical spondylosis.
The so-called sympathetic cervical spondylosis is caused by factors such as intervertebral disc degeneration and segmental instability, which stimulate the sympathetic nerve endings around the cervical spine, resulting in sympathetic nerve dysfunction. Because the surface of the vertebral artery is rich in sympathetic nerve fibers, the vertebral artery is often involved when the sympathetic nerve function is disordered, resulting in abnormal diastolic and systolic function of the vertebral artery. Therefore, sympathetic cervical spondylosis is often accompanied by the insufficiency of blood supply of the vertebral-basilar artery system, which is difficult to diagnose. At present, there is still a lack of objective diagnostic indicators.
The incidence of sympathetic cervical spondylosis is increasing year by year, with an incidence rate ranging from 3.8% to 17.6%. This accounts for about 10% to 25% of all types of cervical spondylosis. For patients with sympathetic cervical spondylosis, the two age groups under the age of 44 and 45 to 50 are the largest, accounting for about 80% of the total population. And the majority of all patients were women, accounting for 61.04%.
Variable symptoms, tinnitus, nausea, and suffocation
Sympathetic cervical spondylosis has a variety of symptoms, most of which are sympathetic nerve excitation symptoms, and a few are sympathetic nerve inhibition symptoms. The onset symptoms were sorted according to the frequency of occurrence, and the top two were neck and back stiffness, soreness, pain and other discomforts (83.12% incidence) and dizziness, dizziness, vertigo (81.17% incidence). Most patients with sympathetic cervical spondylosis first develop chronic neck and shoulder pain, and then develop sympathetic symptoms such as dizziness. The longest time from neck and shoulder pain to dizziness was 276 months and the shortest was 3 months, with an average of (68.98±64.42) months.
In addition, according to statistics, among all patients with sympathetic cervical spondylosis, 71.82% of the patients with sympathetic cervical spondylosis had a foreign body sensation in the throat, nausea or gastrointestinal dysfunction; 83.64% had cardiovascular system symptoms such as palpitation; 63.64% had respiratory symptoms such as chest tightness and suffocation; 48.18% had abnormal sweat gland secretion function such as increased sweating; 81.82% had blurred vision, sore eyes, dry tears, photophobia and other eye symptoms; 68.18% had memory loss; 60.91 % had tinnitus or even hearing loss, pain in the bottom of the ear and other symptoms; 70.00% had cold limbs, numbness and other sensations.
Prevent serious trauma and keep warm
Early treatment for obvious symptoms
How to maintain the cervical spine in daily life?
Keep warm and nourish the cervical spine While paying attention to keeping the cervical spine warm, try not to wear heavier clothes or clothes with high collars to avoid compression of the neck and shoulders. Eat some kelp and liver foods appropriately to supplement nutrition.
Maintain good study and work habits During study and work, take a short break every 2 hours, and do some neck, shoulder, waist and stretching activities appropriately, and a good habit must be formed for a long time.
Beware of Neck Trauma Cervical spine trauma in adolescence is an important cause of cervical spondylosis after middle age. Often the symptoms are not obvious when you are young, but the symptoms will gradually show up when you get older. Therefore, in the event of an accident, early treatment is required.
Early treatment if symptoms appear, such as cervical spondylosis and sympathetic nerve symptoms are more obvious, it is recommended to seek medical treatment in time. In order to carry out rehabilitation, drugs, and surgical interventions as soon as possible, such as massage, traction, acupuncture, minimally invasive surgery, etc., to relieve pain and reduce recurrence, and promote recovery. In the treatment of sympathetic cervical spondylosis, ultra-minimally invasive pulsed radiofrequency surgery has the advantages of less trauma, incomplete anesthesia, quick recovery, and low cost. Ultra-minimally invasive treatment of cervical spondylosis is carried out under high-definition image-guided equipment. The target of the lesion is clear and can reach the vicinity of the diseased nerve, which improves the safety and effectiveness of the operation.
Written by Yang Yucheng, Zheng Shuyue, Li Juanhong
(Beijing Shijitan Hospital)