What is Kyphosis? Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatment
While it’s natural for your spine to curve anywhere from 20 to 45 degrees, kyphosis is a medical condition in which your spine curves excessively forward towards your chest at angles greater than 50 degrees. Affecting the neck and upper back, the condition can make you appear like you’re constantly slouching or hunched over and cause symptoms ranging from persistent back pain to difficulty breathing.
Kyphosis can have minor or major impacts on your health, but fortunately there is help to treat it. The board-certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeons and licensed physical therapists at OrthoGeorgia’s Spine and Orthopedic Center in Macon provide specialized care to help reduce or eliminate the symptoms of kyphosis and guide patients on the road to recovery.
In this article, we’ll discuss the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of kyphosis so you can seek the treatment and find the relief you need.
The Types of Kyphosis
Kyphosis can develop in people of any age from various causes, including slouching, poor posture, compression fractures, spinal disk degeneration as a result of age, and osteoporosis.
The most common forms of kyphosis include:
Postural Kyphosis: Usually developing during your teenage years, often as a result of slouching or bad posture, postural kyphosis occurs when muscles and ligaments around the bones of the spine stretch and displace parts of your spine.
Scheuermann’s Kyphosis: Usually developing around 10 to 12 years of age but occasionally in adulthood, Scheuermann’s kyphosis results from vertebrae being wedge-shaped rather than rectangular-shaped, thus causing your spine to tilt excessively forward. Approximately 8% of U.S. school-aged children experience Scheuermann’s kyphosis.
Congenital Kyphosis: A type of kyphosis someone is born with, congenital kyphosis results when one or more of your spinal bones fails to develop or separate when you are still in the uterus.
Cervical Kyphosis: Also known as military neck, cervical kyphosis occurs when your cervical spine, the part between the bottom of your head and upper back, curves towards your front rather than toward your back as it naturally should.
Hyperkyphosis: Usually developing after age 40, hyperkyphosis or severe kyphosis occurs when your spine curves forward by more than 50 degrees. Between 20% and 40% of adults over 60 experience hyperkyphosis.
What Are The Symptoms of Kyphosis?
Symptoms of milder forms of kyphosis can include:
Rounded shoulders
A hump or curve in your upper back
Tight hamstrings
Stiffness or tenderness in your spine
Back pain
Fatigue
Symptoms of severe forms of kyphosis can include:
Persistent back and shoulder pain and stiffness
Numbness, weakness, or tingling in their legs
Balance issues
Loss of sensation
Bladder or bowel incontinence
Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
While mild kyphosis usually doesn’t cause health problems or require surgery, you may want to reach out to your healthcare provider if you notice an increased curve on your or your child’s spine that affects posture. You should seek emergency attention if you experience shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.
How Do Doctors Diagnose and Treat Kyphosis?
Your doctor can diagnose kyphosis after a physical exam by having you perform a bending forward or lying down test to assess your spine’s curvature. A spine X-ray can help your doctor determine if the curvature of your spine is greater than 50 degrees, while an MRI can help them identify whether your spine’s curve is putting pressure on your spinal nerves.
Mild kyphosis is generally treated non-surgically. Treatment options include posture improvement, physical therapy, chiropractic care, spinal manipulation, and over-the-counter pain relievers.
Severe kyphosis often involves surgery in the form of spinal fusion surgery or kyphoplasty/balloon vertebroplasty. In spinal fusion surgery, the surgeon will align your vertebrae in a straighter position and fuse them together using small pieces of bone to fill the spaces between vertebrae. As they heal, the vertebrae will fuse together.
In kyphoplasty, the surgeon will guide a needle through the skin of your back into the curved or damaged vertebrae and use that needle to inject and inflate a balloon that creates a large cavity in the vertebrae. After deflating and removing the balloon, the surgeon will then inject bone cement into the cavity via the needle before removing the needle entirely. Over time, the bone cement will solidify, which will help straighten the vertebrae. In this video, OrthoGeorgia’s Dr. William Dasher discusses treatment options for kyphoplasty.
After surgery, you may need to spend a few extra days at the hospital to recover; you will also begin physical therapy three to six months after surgery since the vertebrae will have had time to heal. It’s important to note that kyphosis can recur even after treatment. You may need to adopt posture-improving and pressure-reducing lifestyle changes. You should also regularly monitor kyphosis with your healthcare provider throughout your life to help prevent its recurrence.
Turn To OrthoGeorgia’s Orthopedic Specialists For Effective Kyphosis Care
The multidisciplinary team at OrthoGeorgia’s Macon Spine Center has all the latest technologies to diagnose and treat numerous issues that cause back pain. Using CT, MRI, and digital x-ray technology, our spine specialists will provide you with a diagnosis and tailor a treatment plan to meet your needs. Our treatment services offer a range of surgical and non-surgical options to reduce your back pain and prevent future injuries.
If you need comprehensive orthopedic spine care, we encourage you to contact your nearest OrthoGeorgia clinic location and schedule an appointment today!
OrthoGeorgia Will Help Straighten Things Out! Call Us at (478) 280-5472 Today!
Disclaimer: The information contained within this material is intended for informational purposes only. No material in this content is intended to be a substitute for professional medical diagnosis, treatment, or advice. Always seek the advice of your physician or other healthcare provider with questions regarding your medical conditions and treatment options.
What is Kyphosis? Blog Post for OrthoGeorgia
OrthoGeorgia provides general and sub-specialty orthopedic services, including spine care, joint replacement, foot, ankle, and hand surgery, and physical and occupational therapy, for patients across the Middle Georgia region.
As part of an assessment for a content writing position, I wrote this post about the types and symptoms of and treatments for kyphosis, an excessive curvature of the spine, as a sample for OrthoGeorgia's blog. Before writing this article, I researched kyphosis on well-regarded medical websites like those of the Mayo and Cleveland Clinics and kyphoplasty surgery on OrthoGeorgia's website.
When writing the blog post, I discussed the definition of kyphosis, explained the five most common forms of the condition, and listed the main symptoms of mild and severe kyphosis. Then I explained how doctors diagnose the condition in patients and can treat kyphosis through spinal fusion surgery or kyphoplasty. Finally, I included calls to action to encourage readers to set up an appointment with one of OrthoGeorgia's surgeons if they experienced many of the symptoms of kyphoplasty.
By writing this blog post, I helped explain what kyphosis is, how it affects the body, and how it can be treated. I also helped promote OrthoGeorgia's surgical services that can help treat and cure kyphosis.