Most children and adolescents with herniated disks in the lower (lumbar) spine have some sort of malformation of the spinal vertebrae, reports a study in the December issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, published by Wolters Kluwer.
The study by Dr. Zhongjun Liu and colleagues of Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China, helps in understanding how children and teens develop lumbar disk herniation (LDH)--without the "wear and tear" that causes herniated disks in older patients. The results also suggest that surgery on the disk alone, without spinal fusion, is likely to be effective in young patients with low back pain from herniated disks.
