Spinal Condition Expert Witness

When a patient has a degenerative disc in the spine producing chronic back/neck pain, I like to use the donut example. A normal disc is like a freshly baked donut. It has a soft, malleable, squeezable doughy outside with a gelatinous gooey jelly inside. The dough in this example is the Annulus or outer ring of the disc, and the jelly is the Nucleus or inner gelatinous portion. When a disc degenerates over time, whether by aging, trauma, infection etc., the dough starts to crack from multiple tears sustained over time. Because of this, it’s ability to withstand loads (body weight) lessens and the donut starts to collapse. The gooey gelatinous jelly in the center (the nucleus) start to dry out and become like rock candy. This whole cascade of events over time renders the disc a poor shock absorber and the load on it (body weight) is transferred to the adjacent vertebral body (bone) which is not meant to support it. In other words, the freshly baked soft jelly donut with time changes to a hard, brittle jelly pancake, much like a frisbee, unable to tolerate the loads imposed on it.