THE STRUCTURE OF THE «LUMBAR VERTEBRAE-PARAVERTEBRAL MUSCLES» COMPLEX IN WOMEN OVER 50 YEARS OF AGE ACCORDING TO COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY

Abstract

The main aim of the study is to identify patterns of structure and relationship of the lumbar spine elements and surrounding muscles in women over 50 years age.Material and methods. The study was performed on the lumbar spine computer tomograms of 57 women aged 50-73 years. Theimages were taken on an Aquilion 16 TSX-101A tomograph with a slice thickness of 1 mm. Measurements on tomograms were carried out in three planes using the RadiAnt program. The values of 20 parameters were measured in each segment. A median, the estimation of the two-way confidence interval differences according to the Mann-Whitney criterion with statistic significance at p≥0.05, and Spearman correlation analysis were used to describe the severity of each.Results. The width of the vertebral bodies and the length of the spinous process increase with an increase in the ordinal number of vertebrae. There is a tendency to symmetrical expansion of the muscle mass caudally. The maximum number of correlations with a strength of 0.6-1.0 has the width of the paravertebral muscle mass, while the number of correlations variates in contralateral halves of the body. The revealed asymmetry of correlation relationships in the lumbar region reflects the features of bipedal locomotion, human postural stability, and load distribution on the underlying parts of the skeleton.Conclusions. The most correlated structures of the «vertebra - paravertebral muscle segment» complex at the level L1-L5 are paravertebral muscle arrays. The correlation graf of the relationship is asymmetric and is also associated with the peculiarities of transferring the load to the lower limbs.