I often feel pain in my back. Could bone cancer develop in my backbone or in my spinal cord?
You can get cancer in the spine, but it is almost always cancer that has metastasized (spread) from elsewhere in the body.
Besides bone cancer, there are other serious diseases that can cause back pain, including heart disease, arthritis and osteoporosis.
Whenever you have ongoing pain of unknown source, you should see your doctor. It is probably nothing life-threatening, but it makes sense to find out what it is and treat the problem, if possible.
That said, odds are that your back pain is caused by what is called a musculo-skeletal problem — meaning something is amiss with the bone structure, discs or muscles in your back.
About 90 percent of Americans suffer from this kind of back pain at some time in their life.