The Relationship between Spondylolisthesis and Modic Changes: An MRI Study

Abstract

Aim: We aimed to investigate the relationship between the presence of spondylolisthesis and its type with Modic changes by using lumbar magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
 Methods: The study included 139 adult patients aged 18-65 years with lumbar spondylolisthesis detected on lumbar MRI. Demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and levels and degrees of spondylolisthesis and presence of lumbar Modic lesions/types were recorded.
 Results: A total of 75.7% of patients with stage 1 spondylolisthesis had Modic changes, while all patients with stage 2 spondylolisthesis had Modic changes (p=0.001). When only patients with Modic changes were examined, we found that the number of patients with stage 1 spondylolisthesis was higher than that of stage 2 (p0.05).
 Conclusion: We found that there was a relationship between lumbar spondylolisthesis type and presence of Modic changes. In the future, studies involving multicenter and high number of MRI examinations, this issue and the factors that may be effective can be examined in more details.