Should you read your spine MRI report?  I would suggest against it. 

In the era of transparency and patient access to their entire electronic medical record, you CAN look at your spine MRI report.  And, yet, do you know what you are looking at?  Do you know what pathology is significant?  Do you know the LEVEL in your spine that your symptoms originate from? There are many radiologic findings on MRI that are actually asymptomatic. 

Research showed that patients with low back pain who read their MRI results without interpretation by a clinician had lower function and more pain even after 6 weeks of conservative treatment. 

The patients who received a call from their physician and were told “their MRI results were normal with age-related findings” did better than those who read their report.