“Prolonged” low back pain and “without just cause” in young people should raise suspicion of the possible presence of ankylosing spondylitis.
This was warned by the president of the GEER Spanish Spine Society, Dr. Luis Álvarez Galovich, in a statement released coinciding with the commemoration this Saturday of World Ankylosing Spondylitis Day and in which the entity estimated that about 100,000 people in Spain suffer from this disease autoimmune, which is diagnosed “late” and “mainly” in young people and which, in his opinion, “can be disabling.”
In this context, specialists from the Spanish Spine Society GEER indicated the importance of early detection to avoid the evolution of the disease towards its “most serious” stages.
“The diagnosis, however, is not simple, since the symptoms are very nonspecific and the x-rays may initially be normal and even when they generate spinal fractures can go unnoticed due to their special characteristics,” they added.
After pointing out that it is a chronic ailment that is “much more than a simple back pain and that “can be disabling”explained that it is characterized by an inflammatory process that affects the entire spine and begins with the sacroiliac joints, which connect the pelvis to the lower part of the spine.
Early diagnosis, decisive factor
One of the “most decisive” factors for its evolution is early diagnosiswhich is why the surgeons of the Spanish Spine Society GEER recommend “being very attentive.”
“Normally, it is a genetic test that helps confirm the diagnosis and more than 90% of patients are positive for HLA-B27. Early detection of the disease and early initiation of treatment is crucial to avoid the most serious consequences of this diseasewhich can leave the patient in a wheelchair,” they added.
In this sense, the GEER specialists stressed the importance of educational and awareness-raising actions, understanding that, “when patients arrive at the rheumatologist, specialist in charge of your diagnosis, sometimes it is too late“.
“They come after misinterpreting their symptoms as mere back pain that they have become accustomed to living with, despite the condition that affects your daily activities at a key moment in their lives in which they are finishing their studies or starting their career or simply starting to live independently,” they explained, to indicate that, “generally,” the evolution of the disease ” “it is slow and alternates asymptomatic periods with other inflammatory ones.”
In his opinion, they are “worse prognostic” factors. the “very early” onset of the diseaseduring adolescence, the “severe” affectation in the first ten years and the “poor response to treatment with anti-inflammatories”:
“The good news is that new biological treatments have improved the prognosis of this disease when anti-inflammatories are not effectivereducing the percentage of patients in whom functional capacity is severely affected, a percentage that was estimated at 20%,” they resolved.
