By Quinn Phillips – Medically Reviewed by Jason Paul Chua, MD, PhD
Last Updated: March 10, 2021
MS complications due to long-standing disease can affect many parts of the body, from your eyes to your bladder to your feet. Everyday Health
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is known to cause many and various potential difficulties, from common issues like fatigue and vision problems to less common ones like breathing problems and hearing loss, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS).
Problems directly associated with multiple sclerosis are usually referred to as “symptoms.” This category includes issues with movement or walking, balance difficulties, and sensations related to nerve damage like numbness or tingling.
But another term, “complications,” is used to describe problems indirectly related to MS, or to direct effects of the disease that are less common or cause substantial disability or distress.
Here is what defines a complication of MS, as well as an overview of some of the more common MS complications.
What Is an MS Complication?
There’s no universal standard to define a complication of MS, as opposed to a symptom, according to Jaime Imitola, MD, director of the division of multiple sclerosis and translational neuroimmunology at UConn Health in Farmington, Connecticut.
In most health conditions, says Dr. Imitola, the word “complications” refers to issues that develop outside the normal scope of the disease or as a result of sustained damage.
But there’s more than one way to define the scope of a disease. One way to view MS, says Imitola, is as “damage that occurs in the cerebrum, the top of the brain, or the spinal cord. And that defines what the complications might be.”
In other words, any noticeable symptom that occurs as a result of this internal damage could be considered a complication.
In practice, though, the most common symptoms of MS are usually considered to be within the normal scope of the disease, so “complications” is reserved for issues that arise from ongoing or long-standing disease, or those that aren’t directly due to nerve damage.
The range of complications you may develop because of ongoing damage is largely based on where your lesions are, says Imitola.
If you have extensive damage in your cortex, he notes, you can develop cognitive issues: memory, calculation, or attention problems.
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