Protruded lumbar intervertebral disks in children.

Protruded intervertebral disks in the lumbar region occur rarely during childhood and infrequently during adolescence. Jelsma, 1 in 1944, reported a series of 150 cases of protruded intervertebral disks in which the treatment was surgical; the youngest patient in this series was 17 years of age. In 1946, Wahren 2 described a protruded lumbosacral disk in a girl 12 years of age. In 1947, Love 3 observed that only 25 (2.1%) of his series of 1,217 patients who had been operated on for protruded intervertebral disks were less than 20 years of age. Key, 4 in 1950, reported that he had removed protruded intervertebral disks from two patients 18 years of age, one patient 14, and another 12. All these were lumbosacral protrusions. He considered that the physical signs were more extensive than the complaints; otherwise, the clinical features in these patients did not differ materially from those in adult