Fifty percent of people that suffer lower back pain will end up developing an intervertebral disk hernia, according to the annual report of the International Armstrong Clinic of Madrid. Intervertebral disk hernias are very frequent, and specialists suggest that their most frequent origin is lower back pains which have go unattended or incorrectly treated.

Sources from the Physiotherapy Service at the mentioned clinic state that even though 95 percent of disk originated sciatica evolve favorably without surgery, the lack of professional treatment of lower back pains originate recurring painful episodes. In those cases, it is estimated that 30 to 50 percent of those episodes will recur the following year. This is specially taken into consideration by labor and enterprise medicine, since illnesses of the spine cause many of the work absences and premature retirement.

People that most often present hernias are men over 40 years of age, which have a sedentary life, overweight and have unhealthy habits. If added to that they carry out jobs with overloads and uncontrolled efforts, their risk of suffering an intervertebral disk hernia y dramatically increased.

In Spain, the country where this research was performed, the most frequent back pain is intervertebral disk hernia and close to 8 percent of the population suffers chronic lower back pain.

Source: LatinSalud.com with data from AZprensa, 22/05/2007

Most of the children infected by their mothers with Chagas Disease are born without symptoms and only a small percentage show signs.