Detection of Lumbar Spine Degenerative Alterations in Low Back Pain Patients with Varying Ages – A Comprehensive Study

Abstract

Objective: Low back pain in the lumbar spine causes a serious impact in the health care systems. This study was undertaken to detect disc degenerative alterations in different age group patients suffering from low-back pain.
 Methods: This study was conducted on 199 patients (153 males and 46 females) suffering with low-back pain. Lumbar spine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 1.5T was applied and the patients with varying ages were studied on the basis of detection of degenerative alterations in the lumbar segments and the findings were compared in both genders.
 Results: The MRI based detection showed that 55.3% patients were affected with single desiccation (DS), 46.7% patients with disc bulging, 42.2% patients with desiccation with bulging (DB), 44.7% patients were affected with desiccation at multiple levels (DML) and 40.7% patients were desiccation and bulging at multiple levels (DBML). Interestingly, the detection of disc degeneration was almost the same in both genders (p>0.05). The DS and disc bulging at single level were more prevalent in both genders with age<40 years. Interestingly, the DML and DBML were more prevalent in patients 40-60 years old in both genders. Importantly, the DML was found to be statistically higher in both genders with age≥40 years as compared with patients with age<years (p<0.05). The DBML level was also higher in both genders with age≥40 years but it was statistically insignificant (p>0.05).
 Conclusions: This study determined that the disc degenerative alterations in the lower lumbar spine appear at all age levels. Interestingly, there was no difference in the prevalence of disc degenerative alterations in both genders. The data also concluded that age advances the progressive occurrence of degenerative alterations at multiple levels in the lower lumbar spine.