After suffering an injury in October,2006, I had an MRI done. The results of the MRI were:

At the C5/C6 level, there is a bulging disk which is asymmetric to the left. This is superimposed in bilateral uncinate hypertrophy and results in mild to moderate central and bilateral neural foraminal stenosis.

At the C6/C7 level, there is a minimal disk bulge, which results in mild central and no significant neural foraminal stenosis.

I recently was referred to a Neurosurgueon in my area. He seemed troubled and questioned my pain? I have severe right neck pain and shoulder pain, including some numbness and tingling in the right arm and hand. I have a burning sensation that goes down my right shoulder blade when I get tired or over do it? They have ordered an MRI on my right shoulder now. My question is, why if the disc is bulging to the left am I having so much pain to the right? Is this normal or could it be something else? Getting a little tired of the pain after this many months and would like to be done with this all! Any help you may give would be greatly appreciated. Thank You!

Doctor Joshua’s Answer:

It seems that the finding with possible significance on the MRI is the C5-6 disc and hypertrophy, which may cause some nerve compression. Without actually seeing the pictures it’s hard to say, but I suspect the neurosurgeon did not see sufficient correlation between your symptoms and the MRI finding and wanted to make sure that the problem is not in fact in the shoulder.

Pain originating in the shoulder does not usually radiate to the hand, fingers. Cervical nerve root pain however commonly, though not always, radiates to the arm and causes numbness and tingling in the fingers, in your case I might expect thumb numbness/tingling. From your description it seems that your symptoms could conceivably be caused by the narrowing of the C6 nerve root foramen as reported in the MRI. However, the diagnosis can only be done by a physician who can perform a thorough physical examination and has all the details of your symptom history at his disposal.

If it is deemed that your symptoms do indeed come from the bulging disk and hypertrophy at the C5-6 level, then conceivably you could benefit from surgery. However, only your neurosurgeon can actually determine this. Also, most such symptoms, even when they do originate in the cervical spine, have a tendency to resolve over time.

Once the shoulder MRI has been done, if you can, talk to your neurosurgeon again, and ask him to explain his thinking to you more fully.

keep us posted!