The "normal" lumbar spine.

In our medically aware and litigation-conscious society, X-ray films of the lumbar spine are taken in many individuals. We have examined 1172 lumbar-spin X-ray films of young, healthy, predominantly male adults who were seeking employment. Abnormalities worthy of mention were found in 683 of these. These findings suggest that a correlation with the clinical condition of the patient should be carefully established before an abnormality found on an X-ray film is regarded as significant.