Disc Height Model

Intradiscal pressure and height

Intradiscal pressure depends on the understanding disc height loss and its relationship to load.

In a recent publication titled: Intradiscal pressure depends on recent loading and correlates with disc height and compressive stiffness, these authors tackled an important topic to help reveal the deformation an intervertebral disc will experience when subjected to prolonged and oscillatory loads. Often in clinical settings patients will experience low back pain as a result of cumulative and repetitive loads on the spine. It is therefore important to educate the patient on the reasons why pain may generate as the vertebrae begin to approximate. In their methods they tested 15 lumbar goat discs and found that as the pressures decreased over time, the heights of the discs were reduced significantly.  Past ideas around intradiscal pressure and height loss did not think that recent loading events played as much of a role as seen in this publication. Over the course of 4.5 hours of varying high and low dynamic loading, the disc heights reduced significantly. In human discs it is well known that spine pain is more likely to generate from a disc that is compressed vs. one that has normal height. Dynamic Disc Designs construct dynamic disc models to help the educator explain the pain sites in an interactive and research supported way. Explore.