Study Design
A case-control study
Objective
To determine whether parity and abdominal surgeries are associated with degenerative spondylolisthesis (DS).
Summary of Background Data
DS is considered to be a major cause of low back pain (LBP) in the older population, with greater prevalence of DS among women. Because LBP and impaired abdominal muscle function are common during pregnancy and post-partum, parity-related abdominal muscle deficiency, resulting in poor spinal mechanics, could be a factor in the development of DS in women. Indeed a relationship between the number of pregnancies and DS was reported in one study.
Methods
322 women between the ages of 40 and 80 (149 with DS and 173 controls) filled out a questionnaire providing information about their demographics, the number of full-term pregnancies, the number and types of abdominal surgeries (including cesarean section (CS) and hysterectomies), and age at menopause among other items. A binary logistic regression was used as a multi-variate model to identify the variables associated with DS.
Results
Along with age and body-mass-index as co-variates, the number of full-term pregnancies and the hysterectomy were significant predictors of DS. Other abdominal surgeries, CS or the number of years post-menopause were not significant predictors of DS in this regression model after adjusting for all other significant variables.
Conclusions
Each full-term pregnancy seems to be associated with the 22% increase in odds of developing DS. Hysterectomy nearly doubles the odds of DS as compared to women who did not have hysterectomy.
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