Our Mission is to Bring Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatments of Adhesive Arachnoiditis to Every Community

This website was initiated by Dr. Forest Tennant to assist patients, family members, care givers, and medical practitioners world-wide in diagnosing and treating adhesive arachnoiditis.  It is the intention of the Tennant Foundation to maintain this website so that the information contained herein can be used by all concerned parties to treat this rare disease and its many related conditions.

What is Adhesive Arachnoiditis? Adhesive arachnoiditis (AA) is an inflammatory disease of the spinal canal in which cauda equina nerve roots become attached by adhesions to the arachnoid-dural (meninges) covering of the spinal canal.

BASIC FACTS ABOUT AA

• Although an old disease, AA is being identified in every community in great part due to the modern, contrast technology of magnetic resonance imaging.
• Although the precise prevalence of AA is not known, we estimate that about 1.75 to 2.75 million adults in the United States have AA.  The majority of these persons are currently misdiagnosed with non-specific diagnoses such as “Failed Back Syndrome”, “Deteriorated Spine”, or “Radiculopathy.
• AA results from severe trauma of multiple factors including genetic connective tissue disease, autoimmune-collagen disorders, and accidental chemical contamination during epidural injections or spinal taps.
• AA has four categories or stages of severity: mild, moderate, severe, catastrophic.
• AA is a progressive disease that when uncontrolled causes multiple neurologic impairments, exhaustive immobility, intractable pain, and premature death due to cardiac or adrenal failure often with sepsis.
• Since no specific pharmacologic agent has been developed for AA, medical treatment protocols designed to provide relief and slow progression have been developed and are found in Bulletins posted on this website and in books published by this Project.
• The pain generated by AA may exceed all others and require the most potent, effective analgesics and electromedical therapies.  AA when coupled with genetic connective tissue and/or autoimmune collagen diseases is now the most common cause of the Intractable Pain Syndrome.  There are Chronicles posted on this website that address this syndrome.