Abstract
Introduction. Our objective was to review articles that report the prevalence of cervical disc herniations in asymptomatic subjects using MRIs and conduct a qualitative systematic review.
Methods. A MEDLINE search for articles published between 1974 and 2004 was performed, and five articles were retained in this review.
Results. Teresi et al. (1987) studied 35 asymptomatic subjects retrospectively and 65 asymptomatic subjects prospectively, and found 20% of subjects aged 45–54 years, 35% of subjects aged 55–64 years, and 57% of subjects older than 64 years had cervical disc herniations/bulges. Boden et al. (1990) studied 63 asymptomatic subjects and found 10% of subjects of less than 40 years and 5% of subjects older than 40 years had disc herniations. Lehto et al. (1994) studied 89 asymptomatic subjects and found that each of 2 subjects (one 29 and the other 56 years) had a disc prolapse; the prevalence was 2.2%. Matsumoto et al. (1998) studied 497 asymptomatic subjects. They found that 70 of 2480 discs scanned were prolapsed posteriorly (2.8%), and reported that the frequency of these lesions increased after 40 years. Siivola et al. (2002) compared 15 asymptomatic and 16 symptomatic subjects after 7 years and found no disc herniations (0%) in the asymptomatic group and 4 disc herniations (25%) in the symptomatic group.
Conclusions. The prevalence of cervical disc herniations in asymptomatic subjects of less than 40 years of age is 3% to 10% and increases to 20% in subjects up to 54 years of age. The prevalence increases with age—from 5% to 35% in subjects between 40 and 64 years of age.