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Medical Causes of Back Pain: The Rheumatologist’s Perspective

Handbook of Spine Technology
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Abstract

Medical causes of back pain include infection, inflammation, or malignancy. These treatable causes of back pain must be recognized by all health providers so that the diagnosis is not missed and appropriate treatments can be started as soon as possible. A medical cause of back pain should be suspected when patients have features of systemic illness – fevers, rash, unexplained weight loss, or joint swelling – or when their medical history contains comorbidities such as psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease, immunosuppression, or injection drug use. This chapter will focus on how to recognize the clues that will lead to these diagnoses through a series of case studies.

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Correspondence to Lori Albert .

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Gottheil, S., Lam, K., Salonen, D., Albert, L. (2020). Medical Causes of Back Pain: The Rheumatologist’s Perspective. In: Cheng, B. (eds) Handbook of Spine Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33037-2_132-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33037-2_132-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-33037-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-33037-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Medical Causes of Back Pain: The Rheumatologist’s Perspective
    Published:
    10 May 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33037-2_132-2

  2. Original

    Medical Causes of Back Pain: Rheumatologist’s Perspective
    Published:
    11 December 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33037-2_132-1