2009 Low Back Pain - Evaluating Presenting Symptoms in Elderly Patients

Description: The prevalence of back pain in the geriatric population is estimated to be more than 70%.[1-3] As with many other clinical conditions, the cause, course, and evaluation of back pain in elderly people is different than in younger people. An elderly patient with a very first episode of low back merits close evaluation. Degenerative changes in the lower back constitute a normal feature of aging, but these changes by themselves do not cause back pain. In younger people, back pain may be caused by distortion of the gel-like disks sandwiched between the vertebrae of the lower back. With aging, these disks lose much of their water content and are less likely to become distorted. However, this disk desiccation allows adjacent vertebrae to approximate each other and increases the wearing of the articular cartilage. Osteophytes may compress nerve roots and encroach on the spinal canal.
Low Back Pain: Evaluating Presenting Symptoms in Elderly Patients Mark E. Williams, MD