What is Spinal Canal Stenosis?

Spinal canal stenosis is marked by the narrowing of a person’s spinal canal. When this occurs, the spine exerts abnormal pressure on the patient’s nerves as well as on the spinal cord itself. This can cause pain and numbness or tingling in the extremities. In some cases, having spinal stenosis causes a person to experience weakness or have difficulty controlling both his bladder and his bowels. An individual who has this condition may have only one symptom or all of them.

When a person has spinal stenosis, he experiences an abnormal narrowing of the spinal canal. This can affect various parts of the affected person’s spine but is more likely to develop in the patient's neck or lower part of the back. Spinal canal stenosis that appears in the lower section of a patient’s spine is referred to as lumbar spinal stenosis. When the upper section is involved, it is usually referred to as cervical spinal canal stenosis.

The symptoms of spinal canal stenosis may depend on the area of the spine that is affected as well as the severity of the condition. In fact, some people who have some degree of spinal canal stenosis do not exhibit symptoms while others find that their symptoms appear slowly and become progressively worse over time. Pain is a common symptom when a person has spinal canal stenosis. In many cases, a person with this condition feels pain in his neck, lower back, or shoulders. Often, a person with this condition experiences numbness or weakness in his extremities; this may make the patient more prone to falling or dropping things.

In some cases, spinal canal stenosis causes a person to lose control of when he voids. For example, a person with this condition may suffer from bladder incontinence because of the compression of nerves that affect the bladder. Nerve compression may lead to bowel incontinence as well.

There are many things that may cause a person to suffer from spinal stenosis. Sometimes an injury to the spine is at fault. Spinal tumors and disorders that affect the way the bones develop may cause it as well. In other cases, a condition called osteoarthritis, which is marked by the gradual deterioration of the joints, is at fault. Additionally, the degeneration of discs of the spine and significant thickening of the ligaments may sometimes contribute to the development of spinal canal stenosis.