DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2016.v04i12.037

Pages: 4372-4377

The lumbar canal stenosis is the narrowing of the spinal lumber canal, which was associated with lower back pain and motor defects of lower limbs. The determination of normal antero posterior diameter of the lumbar spinal canal is essential in a reliable evaluation of lumber stenosis. In this research we measured the anteroposterior diameter of the lumber spinal canal in the normal adults and stenosis, patients, then the measurements was compared at different lumber vertebral levels, and the causes of lumbar spinal canal stenosis was also investigated in this study. This is a prospective study conducted over a period of 23 month [ January 2013 – November 2014] using magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] in (100 samples ) 50 normal adults and 52 stenosis patients , where measurements of the antero posterior diameter of lumbar vertebral canal were made, and the results were recorded and the significance obtained was evaluate using Student t-test . The result showed that the incidences of lumber spinal stenosis it’s an age and gender dependent, the measurements of the antero posterior diameter revealed that the males lumber spinal canal were slightly wider than those of the females, explaining the high incidence of lumbar stenosis in females compared with males. Although the mean value of measurements significantly increased steadily from L1 toward L5, the result of analysis of lumbar stenosis showed that the lumber stenosis occur more frequently at the level of L5, due to degeneration and intervertebral disc herniation indicating the aging is the main factor in causes of the lumbar stenosis.