Low Back Pain: Clinical Diagnosis and Management

Four out of five people in this country will experience low back pain at some point in their lives. Yet, although a vast amount of diverse literature exists, the confusion regarding effective diagnosis and therapy remains. Consequently, patients are not always treated correctly, and unnecessary loss of work and personal time is very common. This book, the result of Dr. Seimon's 25 years of experience and success as both a clinician and teacher, introduces the reader to a clear, rational method of diagnosing and treating low back problems. Careful history taking is emphasized as by far the most important aspect of diagnosis, and the chapter on history, examination, and investigation forms the basis of the book. This second edition includes the use of magnetic resonance imaging, CT scanning, and other radiographic techniques as important diagnostic tools, and hundreds of high quality reproductions made using these and other modalities complement the oversized text. Dr. Seimon also describes every important therapy for back pain, including: doing nothing at all, prescribing or stopping exercise programs, surgical braces or corsets, pharmaceutical therapies, psychological counseling, bed rest, traction, physical therapy, spinal manipulation, injections, or, when all conservative approaches have failed, surgery. The second part of the book is an involving clinical quiz taken from case histories and building on the principles presented in earlier sections. The reader is asked to decide what therapy to prescribe and can then read the author's conclusions and recommendations regarding management and progress of specific cases.