[Low back pain of dorse-lumbar origin: surgical treatment of postérlor articular capsule excision (author's transl)].

Low back pain may be of dorso-lumbar spinal origin. Pain is transmitted via the posterior branches of the D11, D12, and L1 spinal nerves. The existence in the patient with lumbago of an area of localised pain along the iliac crest, of subcutaneous tenderness or pain in the buttock and of pain over the dorso-lumbar joints is indicative of the diagnosis. Local infiltration at the site of dorso-lumbar tenderness often causes the low back pain to disappear, often temporarily. Since the posterior branches of the spinal nerves are struck down to the capsules of the inter-apophyseal joints, it was felt that excision of these capsules would reproduce, in a permanent manner, the effects of these infiltrations. On the basis of initial results these are grounds for hope relief for certain cases of unexplained lumbar pain or of the sequellae of low lumbar surgery.