Lumbar disc herniation epidemiology

• Adolescent lumbar disc herniation: etiology, diagnosis, and treatment options
• The implications of surgery on sexual dysfunction in patients with lumbar disc herniation with cauda equina syndrome: a systematic review
• Comparison of complications of biportal endoscopic discectomy: ipsilateral versus contralateral approach
• Analysis of primary referral patterns and return to work in patients with incident back pain due to lumbar disc herniation
• Current status and influencing factors of kinesiophobia in patients with lumbar disc herniation after lumbar fusion surgery
• Subtype analysis of Schmorl's nodes in the lumbar spine and the association with lumbar degeneration: a retrospective evaluation of 2262 abdominal CT scans
• Analysis of Risk Factors for Lumbar Spondylolisthesis: A Logistic Regression Study
• Impact of Condoliase on Health-related Quality of Life in Participants With Radicular Leg Pain Associated With Lumbar Disk Herniation: Results From a United States Phase 3 Clinical Trial

Only 1–3% of patients with low back pain have a lumbar disc herniation.

Disc herniation with radiculopathy is one of the most common degenerative disc disease-linked clinical diagnoses that effects the lumbar spine ¹⁾.

Cummins et al.10 reported that the average age of patients with a herniated disc was 41 years, and the diagnosis was slightly more common in males than females (57% versus 43%, respectively) ²⁾.

In contrary to previous reports that the incidence of LDH increases with aging, a study of Ma et al. found that the incidence of LDH has a downward trend with aging in the elderly, especially after 80 years old ³⁾.

Less than 5% of chronic low back pain cLBP patients suffer from lumbar disc herniation (LDH). Nevertheless, more than 30% of annual costs for the medical care of cLBP are spent on conservative as well as invasive treatment strategies in this specific patient population ⁴⁾.

Yearly incidence of surgery for symptomatic lumbar disc herniation varies and is 29/100,000 in Sweden, 46/100,000 in Denmark and 58/100,000 in Norway. This variation was used to study whether differences in surgical incidence were associated with differences in preoperative patient characteristics as well as patient-reported outcomes.

They found no clear association between incidence of surgery for lumbar disc herniation and preoperative patient characteristics as well as outcome, and the differences between the countries were lower than the minimal clinical important difference in all outcomes ⁵⁾.

Lumbar disc herniation (LDH), at L4–L5 or L5–S1 (95%), makes up the vast majority of spinal disc herniation cases ^{6) 7)}.