Conversation: The conversation between human and AI assistant.
[|Human|] I have a thoracic back injury that I haven t recovered from. I got my last set of intravertebral injections on Oct 22. The last 3 weeks my pain has been getting worse. Last night I found an indentation, if you will, around T4-T5. I m still working part time and finished only a two day consecutive schedule and I m in so much pain. Could the indentation(divet) in my back(soft tissue) be from a possible side effect of the injections?
[|AI|]  Hi, Thanks for writing in. You might have had a severe back injury. Since you have found an indentation at T 4 - T 5 then you should get clinically examined and if required X-rays and CT scan or MRI scan of the thoracic spine is to be done. This will show the exact nature of injury. There are discs between bones in the spine, and it is important to know if your bones have reduced in height due to fracture after the injury and if the disc is bulging posteriorly and causing an indentation on the covering of spinal cord. If the disc is significantly causing obliteration of lateral recess and neural foramina compromise then the pain since 3 weeks might be due to this. Other than injections you can discuss treatments like radiofrequency ablation and nerve block. If there is severe disc problem then surgery might help. For the vertebra if there is a fracture and collapse where you find the indentation then vertebroplasty can be doe to restore the height of vertebra. Detailed discussion with your doctor is important. Please do not worry.