Uncovertebral arthrosis
Read Your Scan Editorial Team·Last updated
Written from published radiology references and reviewed for plain language. Not written or signed by a physician, and not a diagnosis. How we write these pages →
In plain language
Wear in the small joints along the sides of the neck vertebrae. It is very common with age and matters mainly when the overgrown bone narrows the channel a nerve root leaves through.
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Where you'll see this
This wording turns up on Cervical Spine MRI reports — MRI imaging of the spine. A cervical (neck) MRI shows the seven neck vertebrae, the discs between them, the spinal cord as it passes through, and the nerves that travel to the shoulders and arms. Doctors order it for neck pain, arm numbness or tingling, weakness, or after an injury. As with the low back, many findings it describes are common age-related changes seen in people without symptoms, so the report is read together with how you feel.
Questions worth asking your doctor
- Do the MRI findings match where I feel neck or arm symptoms?
- Are these changes typical for my age, or does anything stand out?
- What non-surgical approaches, like physical therapy, might help?
- Are there symptoms that would mean I should be seen more urgently?
- Do I need any follow-up imaging, and when?
How common is this?
Uncovertebral arthrosis is one of the most frequent findings on neck imaging in adults, and it becomes close to universal with age. The uncovertebral joints are small joints unique to the cervical spine, sitting along the sides of the vertebral bodies. Like any joint they wear, and as they do the bone around them thickens and spreads. On its own the finding is a description of an ageing neck, not of a disease.
When should I worry?
Presence is not the question; position is. The uncovertebral joints sit right beside the small channels where nerve roots leave the spine, so bone overgrowth there can narrow one — which is when a report links the arthrosis to foraminal narrowing and when symptoms can follow the affected nerve into the arm as pain, tingling or weakness. Neck stiffness and ache alone, with no arm symptoms, is the far more common picture and correlates poorly with how the images look. New weakness in an arm or hand, or symptoms in both arms or the legs, is worth reporting promptly rather than filing under wear and tear.
What happens next
For the usual picture the first line is conservative and works well for most people: movement, physiotherapy, posture and pain relief, on the basis that the neck settles even though the images do not change. Where a nerve root is genuinely compressed and symptoms persist or weakness appears, the conversation moves to injections or surgery, and the scan is then read alongside an examination that localises the affected nerve.
Frequently asked questions
- Is uncovertebral arthrosis serious?
- Usually not. It is a very common age-related change and enormous numbers of people have it with no symptoms at all. It becomes relevant when the overgrown bone narrows the exit channel of a nerve root and produces symptoms that follow that nerve — which the report would describe separately.
- Are the uncovertebral joints found anywhere else?
- No, they are unique to the neck. They sit along the upper side edges of the cervical vertebral bodies and help guide the neck’s movement, which is also why wear there behaves differently from wear in the lower back.
- My neck MRI looks bad but I feel fine. Is that possible?
- Yes, and it is extremely common. Degenerative changes in the neck correlate poorly with symptoms: many people with marked findings have no pain, and many with severe pain have unremarkable images. What is treated is how you feel, not how the scan looks.
Other words on the same report
Where this word comes up
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