2009 Prevalence of and Screening for Serious Spinal Pathology in Patients Presenting to Primary Care Settings With Acute Low Back Pain Medscape

Description: Acute low back pain (<6 weeks) is a common presenting symptom in primary care. Most low back pain is mechanical in nature and does not signify a dangerous underlying abnormality. However, some back pain indicates a serious condition, such as inflammatory disease, fracture, referred pain (eg, from rupturing aortic aneurysm), infection, or cancer.[1] To determine whether there is a potentially dangerous cause of back pain, clinicians often seek historical or examination findings that might be “red flags,� or signs of more serious disease; however, the diagnostic accuracy of red-flag historical points has not been substantially evaluated. Thus, these authors sought to determine the diagnostic accuracy of red flags for serious spinal abnormalities.
Henschke N, Maher CG, Refshauge KM, et al. Arthritis Rheumatism. 2009;60:3072-3080.