The evaluation of back pain

Back pain will affect 60–80% of the population in industrialized countries. Most back pain (90%) will settle in 6 weeks. For the majority of patients keeping active and optimization of analgesia using regular simple analgesic agents will suffice. This article will describe how to identify back pain red flags indicative of serious spinal pathology, how to assess for markers of chronicity (yellow flags) and when to refer for further investigation and specialist input.