Quick Sciatica vs slip disc: what’s the difference? A Ghaziabad physiotherapist explains
Patients in Ghaziabad use sciatica and slip disc as if they were one disease. One is how the leg feels. The other is a line on an MRI. Mixing them is how people rest like glass or chase the wrong treatment.
Someone messages: ‘I have sciatica.’ Someone else forwards an MRI: ‘slip disc, advise physiotherapy.’ In the room they often describe the same Noida cab sit, the same cough-sneeze spike, the same fear of bending for a water jar in Vasundhara. The words are not interchangeable.
Sciatica, in clinic language, is a pattern: pain or paraesthesia in a nerve-like distribution down the leg, often worse with sitting or coughing, sometimes with neural tension signs. It is a description of symptoms, not a photograph of a disc.
Slip disc — disc bulge, protrusion, herniation — is an imaging finding. Plenty of adults have disc changes and no leg pain. Plenty of people have leg pain with a ‘normal enough’ scan. Treating the scariest sentence on page two as if it were the diagnosis is how families freeze.
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