Hi all. I have read a lot of post that have mentioned annular tears in them, but they have all been referred to as radial, etc. I was reading my MRI again and it says I have CENTRAL annular tears at L4-5 and L5-S1. What kind of tear do you suppose they are? Also, it mentions at two levels there is narrowing of the AP diameter to 10mm and 11mm. What does this mean? Will it continue to shrink? What is a normal measurement? Thanks..you all have been very helpful and supportive with your posts.

I called my Neuro today to see if I can get out of my 3rd epidural. I had minimal releif with the first two and have nasty side effects...I have been on my period now for 2 1/2 weeks!

I have annular tears in the cervical, c3 c4 and c6, they are tears in the jelly part of the disc inbetween the vertebrae so they told me. I know one tear was caused by a misplaced injection I had once. I wish I could help you more but the tears is what I know something about.

Nancy, :wave:
I found this for you: Hope it helps:



Annular Tears

The intervertebral disc is composed of an outer capsule, the annulus fibrosis, which surrounds the inner nucleus pulposus. A tear of this capsule, called an annular tear, allows the nucleus pulposus to escape, in some cases producing a visible bulge. This can usually be seen on the MRI with careful inspection. Some patients, however, on routine MRI exam appear to have normal discs but continue to experience severe symptoms which duplicate the normal symptoms reported with disc protrusion. It is now known that these symptoms can be due to an annular tear which allows the inflammatory contents of the disc to escape, even without an obvious disc bulge. Annular tears such as this can be diagnosed with enhanced MRI scans or with a technique called discography. Discography involves injecting the disc with dye; patients with an annular tear will demonstrate leakage of the dye through the tear. Patients with annular tears are frequently not diagnosed properly for years. This is somewhat understandable because often their routine MRIs are read as normal and a discogram, which is not a comfortable procedure, has not been done.

StarAngel :angel:

This post has me wondering.... what is the difference between a disc protrusion and a disc extrusion. It seems logical enough but I don't want to assume anything. Anybody know the answer?