Old bones are clue to back ache

Press, 22 June 1978, Page 13

Old bones are clue to back ache

An unusual combination of Fourth Century skeletons from the British Museum and Twentieth Century electronics from Doncaster has thrown new light on an ailment that afflicts 50,000 people in Britain every day — backache. Richard Porter is consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Doncaster Royal infirmary, and an authority on back pain. He has discovered that a significant clue to the origins of the pain may lie among the spines of skeletons found at the site of an early British settlement at Pounbury in Dorset. “They were of young adults and children and in surprisingly good condition,” he explained. “We were able to measure their spinal canal” — this is the channel carrying the sheath of nerves comprising the spinal cord and surrounded by the segmented vertebrae of the spinal column. Mr Porter finds that the Ancient Britons’ spinal canals averaged 1.3 cms wide (about Jin), compared with 1.6 cms (about jin) for the average person today — who is also nearly a foot taller. Mr Porter's ancient patients also showed much more arthritic changes in their spines than doctors would have expected in such short people. “We have always assumed that the primitive man did not have much backache,” says Mr Porter,

“we thought it was we who where the generation of back pain sufferers.” But it now looks as though the diameter of the spinal cord may have something to do with pain in the back. Early man, for example, was very much the running, jumping and hunting type, and the spinal “wear and tear” of humping his quarry back to his settlement may have led to his widespread arthritic back. Large pressures on the vertebral column often lead to these conditions though TB, infections and VD may also have contributed. “It begins to seem that in a person with a wide spinal canal the cartilagineous spinal discs do not cause pain by compressing the spinal nerves, whereas in a small canal they do so. And it looks as if the genes you inherit from your parents, determining the size of your spinal canal, are far more important than other factors, like getting proper exercise, lifting correctly and taking care of your back ” The theory that back pain is linked to the size of the spinal canal was first suggested 20 years ago by Dr H. Verbiest, a Dutch orthopaedic surgeon. But it is only by the latest techniques of diagnostic ultrasound — a form of sonar scanning — that doctors in Doncaster have been able to provide the first evidence. Ultrasound produces a picture of the spine using

sound waves and “a check of the canal at 18 is all important” says Mr Porter. “One man with a wide channel may be able to work all his life in the mines and never suffer backache; another with a narrow channel may be a cripple in three years.” Student nurses enrolling in Doncaster are now given a ten-minute ultrasound check on their spinal canal because the lifting of patients is a notorious back breaker. They will be followed up in future years, to see if Mr Porter’s new findings are confirmed. “In future we hope to be able to advise new people going into jobs that impose heavy strains on the spine, such as mining or bricklaying, that this would be dangerous to their back,” he says.

Despite Mr Porter’s view that most backaches are born not made, there is still a great deal of sense in observing the simple rules for avoiding trouble: When sitting always use armrests (even in the car) — they reduce back strain by 25 per cent. Use a lumbar support in the car. Carry heavy objects close to the body. Don’t sit when you can stand up straight — surprisingly, sitting increases the strain by 40 per cent by changing the body's centre of gravity.

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MICHAEL JEFFRIES,

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