When a Standard Spine MRI Won’t Cut It

Subscribe today to listen to this content Get Access

Low back pain, already the leading cause of disability globally, is predicted to rise 36.4% by 2050.¹ Which means the number of times a surgeon asks—Where’s the pain coming from?—will also rise 36.4%. Unfortunately, the ability to accurately answer that question has traditionally been something of a dark art—even with a standard MRI scan. An apparently healthy spine disc on an MRI could be, in fact, the pain generator.

In 2018, a team from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) tackled the issue of discogenic pain. David Bradford, M.D., now Chair Emeritus of the University of California, San Francisco Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, worked with John Claude, a respected biomedical engineer, Jim Peacock, a biomedical engineer and patent attorney, and Jeffrey Lotz, Ph.D., a renown spine researcher to, if possible, find a more precise method of pinpointing pain generating spine discs.