By: Ed Susman

CHICAGO, IL – Magnetic resonance imaging studies performed on children who complain of back pain reveal that most of the children exhibit abnormalities – most frequently disc degeneration, doctors noted at the Radiological Society of North America 95th Annual Meeting.

“We expect that back pain in children would be caused by fatigue related to obesity or muscle spasm,” said lead investigator Judah Burns, MD, Children’s Hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, New York, New York, speaking here during a press briefing on December 1. “It is assumed that disc disease does not occur in children, but our findings suggest otherwise. We found that disc disease is common in children with back pain. Moreover, disc disease is more common in overweight children.”

Dr. Burns and his fellow researchers retrospectively analysed magnetic resonance imaging studies involving 228 children – including 40 children without back pain who had spinal MRI studies performed for other reasons.

The findings showed that 97 of the 188 children and adolescents with back pain in the study had magnetic resonance imaging abnormalities – and 91 of these abnormalities were disc problems. These abnormalities were more common among the group of children with high body mass index.

Dr. Burns observed, however, that even children with a healthy-weight body mass index were more likely to have an abnormal magnetic resonance imaging if they had back pain.

Among children with high body mass index, 64% had abnormal magnetic resonance imaging studies compared with 44% of the children who had a healthy-weight body mass index or were less obese, said Dr. Burns. The difference was statistically significant (P = .0338). Normal magnetic resonance imaging studies of the spine were seen in 36% of the healthy-weight and obese children.

When healthy-weight children with back pain were assessed, it was found that 44% of them had an abnormal MRI compared with abnormal spinal magnetic resonance imagings observed among the control patients who had no complaints of back pain.

The study group included children and adolescents aged 12 to 20 years for whom magnetic resonance imaging studies performed during the past 4 years were available for examination. Expert radiologists assessed the magnetic resonance imagings for low-back abnormalities; they found that 91 (48%) of the children had normal magnetic resonance imagings while 98 children (52%) had abnormal scans.

Potential subjects in this study were excluded if they were seen because of trauma-related back pain or if they had been diagnosed with scoliosis or genetic, metabolic, or development issues.

- MFP Wire Services
- 12-02-2009