ReviewOsteoporosis international : a journal established as result of cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA2017
Spinal radiographs in those with back pain-when are they appropriate to diagnose vertebral fractures?
Review in Osteoporosis international : a journal established as result of cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acceptability of self-completion versus face-to-face use of a vertebral fragility fracture clinical decision tool for use in older people with back pain in the UK.Archives of osteoporosis · 2025Article
- Red flags to screen for vertebral fracture in people presenting with low back pain.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2023Review
- Forward Bending in Supine Test: Diagnostic Accuracy for Acute Vertebral Fragility Fracture.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- An observational cohort study to produce and evaluate an improved tool to screen older women with back pain for osteoporotic vertebral fractures (Vfrac): study protocol.Archives of osteoporosis · 2019Article
- Vertebral Fracture Identification as Part of a Comprehensive Risk Assessment in Patients with Osteoporosis.Current osteoporosis reports · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The presence of an osteoporotic vertebral fracture improves fracture risk assessment and may change management, so it is vital for healthcare professionals to assess patients for the presence or absence of these fractures. This may be particularly important in the presence of back pain. However, the correlation between low back symptoms and spinal imaging results is poor and the pathophysiology of most low back pain is not known, leading to a common conclusion that spinal radiographs are not appropriate for the assessment of back pain. For individual patients with back pain, spinal radiographs should be considered if they have certain features in the history and examination. As well as the traditional risk factors for osteoporosis, self-reported descriptives of back pain and novel physical examination findings have been shown to make the presence of vertebral fractures more likely. Systematic approaches have the potential to improve bone health across the population but need to be targeted to be cost-effective. Spinal radiographs should be considered for individual older patients with back pain if they have certain additional features in the history and examination.
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Registered trials
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