Morphological observation of multifidus muscle in patients with unilateral lumbar disc herniation accom-panied by lower back pain on the same side
GUO Yalong
JIANG Weili
CHENG Jiawei
NIE Hu
LIU Tao
HAN Shikang
NIU Guoqi
Abstract：Objective To observe the morphology of the multifidus muscle in patients with unilateral lumbar disc herniation(LDH)accompanied by lower back pain(LBP)on the same side,and to explore the impact of changes in multifidus muscle morphology on LBP.Methods Forty-three patients with unilateral LDH accompanied by ipsilater-al LBP were evaluated for LBP pain using Visual Analog Scale(VAS),and were divided into the group A(VAS score≤4 points)and group B(VAS score>4 points)based on the patients'VAS score.Patients of both groups underwent lumbar spine MRI scan,and Image J software was used to measure the relative cross-sectional area(RCSA)and the degree of fat infiltration(DFF)of the multifidus muscle on the L4/5 herniated and non-herniated sides of the intervertebral discs in both groups.Results The RCSA and DFF of the non-herniated side of the intervertebral disc in 43 patients were 40.15±4.87 and 28.88±6.27,respectively.The RCSA and DFF of the herniated side of the intervertebral disc were 36.57±4.74 and 33.83±5.53,respectively,with statistically significant difference(all P<0.05).Compared with the non-herniated side of the intervertebral disc,the RCSA of the multifidus muscle on the herniated side of the intervertebral disc in the patients of group A decreased and the DFF increased(all P<0.05);compared with patients in the group A,pa-tients in the group B showed a decrease in RCSA and an increase in DFF in the non-herniated side of the intervertebral disc multifidus muscle(both P<0.05).Conclusions Unilateral LDH patients with ipsilateral LBP experience atrophy of the multifidus muscle on the herniated side of the intervertebral disc.Compared with patients with mild LBP pain,patients with severe LBP pain also experience atrophy of multifidus muscle on the non-herniated side of the intervertebral disc.
Keywords：multifidus musclelumbar disc herniationlower back painrelative cross-sectional areafat infiltra-tion degree
Publication Date：2023-11-25
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：4( 32-35 )