Zeitschrift für Wirbelsäule

Age-Related Incidences of Spondylosis of the Lower Cervical Spine Radiographic Study of 460 Jeju Islanders

Abstract

Myung-Sang Moon, Min-Geun Yoo, Sang-Min Lee, Bong-Keun Park and Dong–Hyeon Kim

Study design: Cervical spine radiograms of 460 Jeju islanders, taken at the Cheju Halla General Hospital, Jeju, were the study materials.

Objectives: To investigate the age-matched incidences and severity of the cervical disc degeneration and associated pathologic findings.

Summary of background data: There exist several previous studies on the incidences of disc and Luschka’s and facet joint degeneration in the Europeans and Asians which provided the basic data for the interested clinicians.

Methods: Cervical radiographs of 460 (220 males and 240 females) patients of fourth to ninth decade were subjected to this prospective study. Ninety patients of third decade were excluded because none showed the spondylotic findings on radiograms. There were 76 patients (16.5%) in fourth decade, 107 patients (23.3%) in fifth decade, 112 patients (24.3%) in sixth decade, 85 patients (18.5%) in seventh decade, 64 patients (13.9%) in eighth decade, and 16 patients (3.5%) in ninth decade.

Results: Overall incidences of cervical spondylosis were 47.8% (220 patients out of 460 patients). The percentile incidences of spondylosis in fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth decade were 13.2%(10 out of 76 patients), 34.6%(37 out of 107 patients), 58.9%(66 out of 112 patients), 58.8%(50 out of 85 patients), 70.3% (45 out of 64 patients), and 75.0%(12 out of 16 patients).

The percentile incidences of one, two, three, four and five level spondylosis among 220 spondylosis patients were 45.5%(100 patients), 34.1%(75 patients), 15.0%(33 patients), 4.5%(10 patients), and 0.9%(2 patients). Severity of disc degeneration ranged from ± to ++++; ± in 6.0% (24 segments), + in 49.6% (198 segments), ++ in 35.3% (141 segments), +++ in 9.0% (36 segments) and ++++ in 0.25% (1 segment). Spurs and anterior ligament ossicle formed at the spondylotic segments, mostly at C4~6. Posterior corporal spurs formed in quite low rates. Olisthesis and OPLL rarely combined with spondylosis.

Cervical sagittal lordotic curve decreased gradually according to the progress of spondylosis, particularly over + disc degeneration.

Conclusion: It was evidently shown that the incidences of cervical spondylosis and numbers of spondylotic segments increased, and that degeneration became more severe gradually throughout the aging process.