Dorsalgia: What It Is, Types, and Causes of Back Pain

The word "dorsalgia" in a doctor's report frightens many people. But it is not a separate disease — it is the medical term for back pain, and the doctor will then look for its source.

What dorsalgia is

Dorsalgia (from Latin dorsalgia) is pain felt in the back. It occurs frequently: about 95% of people experience it at some point in their lives, and five out of ten working adults — every year. It is the most common type of chronic pain.

In 90 percent of cases, no physiological causes or abnormalities can be found on diagnostic tests — such pain is called nonspecific.

Primary and secondary dorsalgia

Dorsalgia is back pain. Primary (nonspecific) pain is associated with dystrophic or functional changes in the tissues of the musculoskeletal system. Secondary (specific) pain is a symptom of other pathological conditions.

Types of dorsalgia: cervical, thoracic, lumbar

By location relative to the segments of the spine, cervical (neck), thoracic (middle back), and lumbar pain are distinguished — the latter is also called lumbago; separately, coccygodynia, pain in the coccyx or sacrum.

By duration: short-term, acute — up to 6 weeks, subacute — from 6 to 12 weeks, chronic — longer than three months.

• Local pain is felt directly at the site of the pathological process.
• Radiating pain spreads from the site of the process to healthy organs and is felt in both places.
• Referred pain is felt not where the source is located.
• By mechanism of development, nociceptive, neuropathic, nociplastic, and psychogenic pain are distinguished.

Causes of dorsalgia

A common cause is trauma such as a muscle strain. Less often, pain is caused by a herniated intervertebral disc, sciatica (a compressed nerve), ankylosing spondylitis. Very rarely, back pain turns out to be a sign of a fracture, tumor, or infection.

Common primary causes include degenerative or traumatic changes of the discs and facet joints, which produce secondary pain in the muscles and nerves. Diseases and inflammation of the gallbladder, pancreas, aorta, and kidneys can also radiate to the back.

Degenerative variants include spondylosis, in which the disc stops cushioning the vertebrae, spondylolisthesis (forward displacement of a vertebra), and spinal canal stenosis, usually manifesting in people over 60 years of age. Compression vertebral fractures occur in four percent of patients with low back pain; the risk is higher with age, in women, with osteoporosis, and with long-term use of glucocorticoids. Discs are most often affected at the L4–L5 or L5–S1 level.

How dorsalgia is diagnosed

For examination in back pain, radiography, MRI, myelography, and discography are used.

When back pain requires an urgent visit to the doctor

A routine visit is needed if the pain does not resolve after several weeks, interferes with everyday activities, does not ease after rest or is worse at night, intensifies with sneezing, coughing, or defecation, comes from the upper back between the shoulder blades, and also if you have lost weight without effort or noticed swelling or a change in the shape of the back.

An urgent consultation is needed with fever, chills, or general malaise, with sharp pain that began suddenly or is rapidly increasing.

Dorsalgia by itself is not a reason to call an ambulance; 103 or 112 — if the pain is accompanied by numbness, weakness, or tingling in both legs, loss of sensation in the genital and anal area, changes in urination or bowel movements, changes in sensation during sexual intercourse, chest pain, and also if it began after a serious accident.

This material is for reference: it does not replace a doctor's consultation and examination — a diagnosis is not made from an article.

This content is for reference and does not replace a doctor's consultation. Medical disclaimer