Determination of the anatomic factors that affect the pain values in LDH diagnosed patients

Introduction: Lumbar disc herniation (LDH) is one of the important diseases that cause lumbar pain. In this study to find the cause of the pain, the anatomical alterations of patients without spinal stenosis were examined through MRI retrospectively.Methods: Seventy people with lumbar pain and seventy people who were diagnosed with L4-L5 lumbar disc hernia without spinal stenosis were selected respectively as the control group and the patient group. The maximum anterior-posterior hernia length and hernia width and spinal canal's sagittal-transverse diameters were measured on the T2-weighted axial and sagittal magnetic resonance images.Results: The measured visual analog scale (VAS) values were compared between genders and the two groups and between herniation and spinal canal diameter. VAS values were found statistically significant between the groups (p < 0.001).Discussion: LDH did not always coexist with spinal stenosis and by selecting only patient with L4-L5 LDH level we put forward that anatomic structures surrounding the disc heniation were not affected by the intervetebral disc (IVD) degeneration. Specially the herniation length is significant than the herniation width due to the risk of the dural sac remaining under central pressure depending on the length of increase of IVD. These findings also disclose the reason for the rise in the VAS value in LDH patients. (C) 2017 Anatomical Society of India. Published by Elsevier, a division of RELX India, Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.