I have had an mri of my brain and thoracic part of the spine done .(it showed slipped disc in my neck ,but thats been operated on now )
My neuro now wants to do my lumbar spine ,i know hes looking to see if theres any disc damage but what i wondered was can you get ms lessions that far down? i dont know why but i thought you didnt ? im having alot of pain in both legs ,numb big toes .Very painful shooting pains .
thanks
sam x
Hi Sam,
Yes you can get lesions in any part of the CNS even your peripheral nerves. This map of your spine will show you if you get a lesion in that area it may cause problems where indicated; http://www.makoa.org/scimap.htm
I say may as all instructions come from your brain. The spine is just a thin, bony, flexible tube; about the size of your thumb that carries millions of nerves. So it could be a lesion/s on the brain or spine.
Hope this helps
George
The spinal cord is shorter than the spine so that almost all of it is seen in the cervical and thoracic scans - only a very small part is in the lumbar spine. MS can cause lesions anywhere in the central nervous system, so it can (and does) cause lesions in the lumbar spinal cord, but the very low odds of only having a lesion in that small part of the system mean that most neuros don’t bother scanning the lumbar spine if there is no evidence of lesions elsewhere, and if there are lesions elsewhere it’s not necessary for diagnosis anyway. (The symptoms would indicate if it was needed though.)
The nerves running from the spinal cord are not affected by MS, but they can be by many other things, including disc damage. For example, because the spinal cord pretty much finishes at the top of the lumbar spine, a slipped disc in the lumbar spine would be very unlikely to affect the spinal cord, but it could affect the nerves which run off the cord and through the vertebrae.
The fact that you are having problems in both legs does suggest a spinal problem - so hopefully this new scan will find the culprit - and they can fix it!
Karen x