[Diagnosis of lumbar spine pain: are simple anatomic concepts sufficient for common practice?].

Low back pain is a very frequent complaint. Unfortunately, a specific diagnosis can be made only in a minority of cases. Many pain provocation and alleviation tests have been done, and their results help the clinician in some cases to locate the origin of pain in the lumbar spine. It has been postulated that these tests should be reserved for the realization of controlled clinical trials evaluating different treatment modalities.