[Lumbar discal hernia after 65 years of age]

The authors make a retrospective study of a series of 200 patients who had been surgically treated, within a period of 26 months, for a lumbar discal pathology. Twenty of these (20%) were over 65 years old. A similar study was carried out in a rheumatological unit over a period of three years, and has included 266 patients, 21 of whom (7,8%) were older than 65. The comparison of both these series permits us to make some considerations concerning the frequency of this pathology after the age of 65, its clinical presentation and its treatment, which, as for the younger adult, must be surgical when the correct treatment fails and when a complication appears.