Back pain is common in adults. But it is now also being diagnosed more often in children and teenagers. Back pain can be more common in children due to higher average body weights, higher rates of obesity, higher intensity and year-round sports, and the increasing weight of backpacks that students take to school. Most parents don’t expect their healthy kids to complain about back pain. But since it can occur, we wanted to share with you some advice and insight into this topic. Continue reading below to find out when to worry about my child’s back pain.
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Warning Signs of Child’s Back Pain
The vast majority of kids with back pain have symptoms that are caused by muscle or ligament injury. While this might sound scary at first, there is typically nothing more serious to worry about.
Some of the warning signs of a more serious issue that you should look out for include:
- Pain at night, especially pain that wakes your child up.
- Constant pain.
- Illness symptoms such as fever, chills, or weight loss.
- Symptoms in very young children.
- Leg pain, numbness, or weakness.
These signs don’t necessarily mean that there is a more serious problem, but they are a good test to determine if more investigation should be carried out. For example, muscular back pain can stick around for months. However, if the symptoms have been going on for a few weeks, it’s a good idea to see a doctor or chiropractor to make sure nothing else is going on.
Muscular Back Pain
Muscular back pain is the most common cause of back pain in kids and teenagers. Injuries include muscle strains, ligament strains, overuse injuries, posture problems, and poor conditioning of the muscles in the back.
In most cases, muscular pain will improve after some rest and changes to daily activity. Many treatments will offer some relief. But the long-term effects of treatments are debatable, although they are safe. Treatment could be physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, stretching programs, yoga, or massage.
Stress Fractures
Stress fractures can happen in the spine. Oftentimes, they might never realize that an injury even happened. But stress fractures like these can happen in teenagers.
The most common kind of spinal stress fracture is called spondylolysis, which is an injury to the bone in the back of the spinal column. This injury can happen to teenagers who do sports that involve bending the spine backwards such as gymnastics or diving.
If the stress fracture happens on both sides of the spine, this can make the spinal column unstable, which is called spondylolisthesis. This is sometimes known as a spinal slip.
Recovery
Stress fractures can make children and parents very worried because these injuries don’t heal. They can cause symptoms through adolescence and young adulthood. However, most children and teenagers that are given a diagnosis of spondylolysis are treated without surgery and do well with less-invasive treatments.
Surgery is usually only for those who have pain even after months of nonsurgical treatment, or for patients with more severe slips.
Long-term studies show that the chance of having back pain in adulthood is unchanged by the presence of a stress fracture in childhood. This can be a source of problems, but the chance of developing back pain in adulthood is not changed by spondylolysis as a child.
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