Diagnostic Imaging Pathways - Low Back Pain

Summary

This pathway provides a diagnostic imaging algorithm for patients with acute low back pain. It highlights the 'red flag' symptoms/signs that prevent indiscriminate use of plain radiography for this complaint.

PDF

The PDF for this pathway is 927Kb's in size.

Update

This pathway was last reviewed in April 2009.

Quick User Guide

Move the mouse cursor over the PINK text boxes inside the flow chart to bring up a pop up box with salient points.
Clicking on the PINK text box will bring up the full text.
The relative radiation level of each imaging investigation is displayed in the pop up box.

SYMBOL	RRL	EFFECTIVE DOSE RANGE
	None	0
	Minimal	< 1 millisieverts
	Low	1-5mSv
	Medium	5-10 mSv
	High	>10 mSv

File Formats

Some documents for download on this website are in a Portable Document Format (PDF). To read these files you might need to download Adobe® Acrobat Reader.