[Intervertebral disk displacement in children and young adults].

A report is given on 10 children and adolescents who were surgically treated because of prolapses of lumbar intervertebral discs. Besides a detailed anamnesis, the preoperative diagnosis was mainly based on general medical and neurological findings as well as X-ray pictures of the lumbar vertebral column. In case of the absence of radicular neurological failures and pecularities in the X-ray picture, e.g. signs of a spinal process of displacement, destructive changes in the osseous structures of the vertebral column, assimilation disturbances in the lumbosacral transition region, there is the indication for Dimer-X myelography. For all patients, histologically distinct to high-degree degenerative changes in the withdrawn vertebral disk material were found. Reliable signs of a traumatic genesis of the intervertebral disk prolapse were not seen.