Can Systemic Inflammation Be Predicted in Cervical Discopathy Patients Using Hemogram Data?

Objective: To compare hemogram data of patients with single-level discopathy, multi-level discopathy and no discopathy on cervical MRI Methods: The patients' clinical history, MRI images and hemogram data were retrospectively accessed from our hospital data system. The subjects’ values of hemogram parameters including neutrophil count, lymphocyte count, white blood cell (WBC) count, platelet (PLT) count, neutrophil /lymphocyte ratio (NLR), PLT/lymphocyte ratio, MPV and RDW were recorded. In addition, cervical MRI images and radiological reports were accessed from the hospital data system. Results: In the study, data from a total of 416 patients were evaluated in 3 groups. The first was the single-level cervical discopathy (CDH) group (n=79), the second was multilevel CDH (n=186), the third was the control group (n=151). Statistically, there was no difference between MPV, RDW, WBC, neutrophil and PLT counts in the three groups. While there was no difference between patients without discopathy detected on cervical MRI and patients with single-level discopathy, there was a statistical difference in the PLT/lymphocyte ratio and lymphocyte count compared to the multi-level CDH group. While the lymphocyte count was lower in the patient group without discopathy (p=0.012), the Plt/lymphocyte ratio was higher (p=0.02). Conclusion: This study, which we conducted using the hemogram data of patients with and without cervical discopathy detected on cervical MRI, shows that we cannot predict systemic inflammation using only the hemogram data.