A retrospective study: Does cigarette smoking induce cervical disc degeneration?

Abstract Objective To investigate cigarette smoking's relevance with cervical disc degeneration. Methods We randomly selected 320 patients who came to our spine disease department outpatient clinic with chief complaint of neck-shoulder pain during June 2014–June 2016. According to the detailed smoking history, these patients were divided into 3 different groups, which were active smoker group (AS), passive smoking group (PS) and never-smoker group (NS). Each patient's Miyazaki's magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) classification of cervical disc degeneration was analyzed based on their cervical MRI films. In addition, VAS scores were applied to evaluate the degree of patients' neck-shoulder pain. With the help of statistical techniques, relevance between cigarette smoking, cervical disc degeneration and neck-shoulder pain were analyzed. Results In the NS group, the overall Miyazaki score, especially for C2/3, C3/4, C5,6 segments, are superior to those in the PS group, in addition, the Miyazaki scores for C1/2 – C6/7 segments in NS group beat the same segments in AS group with statistical significance (P  Conclusion Smoking could accelerate the process of cervical disc degeneration, presenting with more severe neck-shoulder pain on the patients. In addition, the impact of smoking on the lower cervical discs is greater than the upper cervical discs.