Investigation of Systemic Inflammation in Single Level Lumbar Disc Herniation and Multilevel Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Patients

Objective: It is stated that there must be inflammation and irritation in the nerve root in order to develop symptoms in the presence of disc herniation and spinal stenosis. In this study, it was aimed to reveal the inflammatory difference between these two diseases by using neutrophil lymphocyte ratio and platelet lymphocyte ratio which are accepted as markers of systemic inflammation in single level lumbar disc herniation and multi-level lumbar spinal stenosis patients. Methods: Fifty patients (31 female, 19 male) with a single lumbar disc herniation, 50 patients (34 female, 16 male) with lumbar spinal stenosis and 50 healthy controls (33 female, 17 male) was included in the study.The complete blood count of the three groups were recorded retrospectively from the hospital data. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of neutrophil lymphocyte ratio and platelet lymphocyte ratio (p <0.001, p = 0.003, respectively). The values of the control group were lower than the other groups. In addition, it was detected that the lumbar spinal stenosis group had higher neutrophil lymphocyte ratio and there was a statistically significant difference with lumbar disc herniation group (p <0.001). Conclusion: Neutrophil lymphocyte ratio and platelet lymphocyte ratio are the new markers that can be easily applied to evaluate inflammation in nerve tissue and calculated from low-cost complete blood count data. The neutrophil lymphocyte ratio may be easier for the physician to understand whether the compressed nerve tissue increases