Sitting in the doctor’s office following an injury, you try to listen to every word he or she says while laying out the facts about the cause of your pain. Some terms are familiar; some sound like a foreign language. You leave thinking, what does all that really mean?
Cut through the confusion with some easy definitions for common injuries:
- Sprain. A sprain is a stretching or tearing of ligaments. Ligaments are tough bands of fibrous tissue that connect one bone to another. Common locations for sprains are your ankles and knees.
- Strain. A strain is a stretching or tearing of muscle or tendon. People commonly call strains "pulled" muscles. Hamstring and back injuries are among the most common strains.
Source: Mayo Clinic - Fracture. A break or crack in a bone.
Healing time for sprains, strains and fractures vary from person to person. It is a general rule that strains take less time for recovery, because injuries to areas which have a good blood supply, like muscles, heal faster. Since ligaments have very little blood supply, they take longer. Fractures to bones with a greater blood supply are also known to heal more quickly than injuries to bones with a lesser supply.
- Contusion. A bruise, or contusion, is caused when blood vessels are damaged or broken as the result of a blow to the skin (be it bumping against something or hitting yourself with a hammer). The raised area of a bump or bruise results from blood leaking from these injured blood vessels into the tissues as well as from the body's response to the injury. (from Medicinenet.com)
Spinal injuries have a set of terms all to themselves. Many are interchangeable and some are used differently from doctor to doctor. Rather than focus on terms, it’s important to understand the source of the pain to determine the best course of action.
Dr. Peter Ullrich, Jr. provides a list of terms used to describe spinal disc abnormalities in an article on spine-health.com, these include:
- Pinched nerve
- Sciatica
- Herniated disc (or herniated disk)
- Bulging disc
- Ruptured disc
- Torn disc (or disc tear)
- Slipped disc
- Collapsed disc
- Disc protrusion or degeneration
- Degenerative disc disease
- Disc disease
- Black disc
According to Ullrich, the diagnosis determines the pain generator. The key factor in the clinical diagnosis is to determine if the patient has a pinched nerve or if the disc space itself is generating the pain. These two common conditions produce a different type of pain.
- Pinched nerve. When a patient has a symptomatic herniated disc, it is not the disc space itself that hurts, but rather the disc herniation is pinching a nerve in the spine. This produces pain that is called radicular pain (e.g., nerve root pain, or sciatica from a lumbar herniated disc, or arm pain from a cervical herniated disc).
On Spine-health.com, this type of condition is referred to as a herniated disc. - Disc pain. When a patient has a symptomatic degenerated disc (one that causes low back pain or other symptoms), it is the disc space itself that is painful and is the source of pain. This type of pain is typically called axial pain.
On Spine-health.com, this type of condition is referred to as a degenerative disc disease.
As with all injuries, the diagnosis determines the treatment. By providing your doctor with accurate descriptions of your physical limitations, pain and degree of suffering, he or she will be able to combine that with medical testing to pinpoint the source of your problems. Treatment for each injury varies. Pain caused by a bulging disc will not be resolved by treating a muscle sprain, and surgery may not be appropriate in many cases.
Before considering any treatment, make sure to discuss it thoroughly with your medical care provider.
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