The patient with severe unremitting lower back pain

Abstract

In each of the chapters in this book a syndrome has been described which should lead the physician to a progressively more narrow choice of diagnoses. The opposite is true with the uncommon and often perplexing patient with severe unremitting lower back pain. Patients with many different diseases may, at some point in the course of the illness, complain of constant pain in the back. These patients form a subset of several of the different low back pain syndromes. The complaint can also be present in a group of vascular causes of lower back pain some of which are well known and some of which are gradually becoming elucidated. Patients with severe unremitting low back pain can be divided into acute, subacute and chronic groups based on presentation of symptoms (Table 1).