Understanding Potential Causes of Back Pain in Younger and Older Children

Most adults experience back pain at some point during their lifetime. But there are many children who complain of back pain. The younger and older children experience back pain due to a variety of reasons – infection, injury and bone tumor. Some of the potential causes of child back pain can be serious. The child needs to be treated by a skilled orthopedic to alleviate back pain and heal quickly. Hence, it becomes essential for parents to understand the potential causes of back pain in children.

Potential Causes of Back Pain in Younger and Older Children

Muscular Back Pain

Most children experience severe back pain due to muscular injuries. Poor conditioning of muscles on the back, muscles overuse injury, muscle and ligament strains, and similar injuries often make a child experience back pain. The orthopedic identify muscular back pain through specific image study. The child can combat muscular back pain simply by taking adequate rest and changing his physical activities.

Spinal Stress Fractures

Often the stress fractures occurring in the spine make children experience severe back pain. But the children often failed to identify the injury in the early stages. Also, a child may suffer from various types of stress fractures. Specific stress fracture like spondylolisthesis can occur on both sides of the span and make the spinal column unstable. Often orthopedic treat spinal stress fractures through nonsurgical treatment. However, they have to perform surgery if the child back pain persists despite continuing nonsurgical treatment.

Disc Herniation of Spine

Disc herniation of spine is one of the serious causes of child back pain. It moves the disc material from its normal space and pushes the disc material against spinal cord and nerves. Hence, a child experiences back pain, along with bending and straightening his spine with difficulty. Often orthopedic perform surgery to relieve pressure on the spinal cord and nerves.  But some physicians try to treat disc herniation without surgery if the child does not experience severe and consistent back pain.

Spinal Infection

Some children experience back pain consistently due to infection of spinal discs or bone. The spinal infections can occur in both toddlers and adolescents. The orthopedic has to perform specific image tests to diagnose spinal infection and identify the exact location of the infection. They also treat the spinal infection initially with antibiotics. But the orthopedic have to perform surgery if the prescribed antibiotics fail to control the infection or the spinal structure is damaged due to the infection.

Abnormal Alignment of Spine

In addition to causing deformity, abnormal alignment of spine also makes children experience severe back pain. However, the spinal deformity may differ from one child to another. An orthopedic monitors the conditions of deformity continuously to determine the most appropriate way to treat abnormal alignment of spine. If the condition is not severe, they try to normalize spine alignment by making the child wear braces. But they have to perform surgery if the spine deformity is consistent and the deformity must be corrected permanently.

Spinal Tumor

Sometimes the tumors occurring in the spinal column cause severe child back pain. A variety of tumors can occur in the spinal column. Hence, the orthopedic can to decide the treatment plan according to each spinal tumor. But the parents can identify spinal tumors based on common symptoms like consistent back pain, night pain and weight loss. The orthopedic combine medication and surgery to treat the spinal tumors effectively.

Sometimes the physicians have to perform bone scanning to identify the exact cause of back pain in a child. Hence, the parents must consult a skilled orthopedic when the child complains of back pain consistently. The orthopedic will perform the required screening tests to identify the exact cause of child back pain and speed up the healing process.