 Online with me is a Spine Surgeon Dr. Raghuram G. Good morning to you. Good morning Preeti. Dr. Raghuram G is Consultant Neurosurgeon and Spine Surgeon Manipal Hospital D. Ashwantpur. Thank you so much for your time this morning Dr. Raghuram. My pleasure Preeti. Turns out there are a lot of spine injuries. Actually I was, I had one such, I had a slipped his long back. Okay I am fully recovered however. Let me ask you what are the 5 signs of spinal injury Dr. Raghuram. Yeah so like you said Preeti, spine injury has become a major issue now for many of the people even including youngsters. The commonest signs that we see of spinal injury is pain in the back is the most commonest is the symptom. Many of them come to us with low back pain so that is one of the earliest sign of your spine telling you please take care of me. The next common thing is this pain which is not only in the back now is started to come to my leg also doctor. So that is the second important sign that we look for. There is sciatic right? Yes exactly so it becomes like a sciatic pain. So it's not only causing muscle pain in the back it's also started to irritate the nerve root which is coming to your leg and that is causing the pain to come to the leg. The third thing is once the pain becomes more and more longer duration then you start complaining of some abnormal sensation like tingling, numbness or burning in the leg. So this is another sign of spine injury and some patients who unfortunately are involved in road traffic accidents come to us with frank weakness of the legs. That means they say doc I cannot move my leg. So that is another important sign that we look for and in very very severe case of injury they also complain that they have no control of their urine or motion. So these are the commonest you know the progression of the symptoms that we see in patients with spinal injury. Which gender or age group gets more affected? Previously it was thought that these spine problems happen only in the older people you know like actually you tend to get arthritis and you tend to get you know more severe degeneration in the back. But unfortunately it's no longer like that. What has happened now is that we are seeing more and more patients coming to us especially the anger age group. Just now I was telling you the working age group which is actually the backbone of any country you know getting into these kind of symptoms which actually leads to you know loss of their productive work. Because if they have severe back pain they can't go for work they lie down at home. So the age group that we are seeing now is almost like 35 to 55. So that is the commonest stage that we are seeing these kind of spinal injury problems. In terms of gender the only specific thing is especially ladies can have a little osteoporosis especially the postmenopausal people. And if they don't take adequate calcium in their diet they can have what is called the structures of the backbone even with trivial faults. So that is the only thing in terms of gender. Otherwise it affects both of them equally. One last question. When should one visit a doctor? When we were talking to you in the beginning. So if there is a back pain you know which is persisting that means you just wake up with a back pain and it goes off by afternoon or evening. Then probably it's just that you had a muscle spasm. But if it persists and this back pain is not going away even if you try your routine medication like a paracetamol and it's persisting. Or the other symptoms which I told you like back pain coming to the leg or abnormal sensation. Any of these signs I think you should immediately go and meet your spine specialist. So that we can diagnose early and treat you appropriately. Doesn't mean that everybody needs surgery is just to give you the correct guidance at an early stage. So that you can prevent it from getting worse. Super. Thank you so much for your time. That's Dr. Raghuram G. Consultant Neurosurgeon and Spine Surgeon Manipal Hospital, Leshwantpur. This is Fever 104 FM. I am Prithvi, Bangal Orka Bond. Good morning to you.