[Backache--what to remember?].

This review tries to help the general physician to discriminate between extravertebral and vertebral causes of back pain by medical history and clinical investigation. The extravertebral causes are most often related to psychobiosocial disturbances, less often to muscular overload, viscerogenous or neurogenous causes. The vertebral causes, on the other side, are often related to functional disturbances of intervertebral joints or degenerative disorders or, in rarer instances, to metabolic, inflammatory, tumourous, or developmental disorders of the spine.