- SlidesCaseload 1Lumbar PIV (Posterior Intervertebral) Joint DysfunctionThe lumbar spine's answer to the cervical PIV joint page, and the answer is different. Better evidence, lower prevalence, and not one clinical test that works. Two Australian-led systematic reviews sixteen years apart could not find a single examination test for this joint that clears the informativeness bar — and the only test that does clear it is a nuclear medicine scan you will never order. A student who carries cervical confidence south will over-call this pattern every week of placement.
- SlidesCaseload 1Non-Specific Low Back PainThe most common thing you'll see on placement. The pattern, the questions that confirm it, and what to actually do — anchored to the Australian standard.
- SlidesCaseload 2Lumbar Radicular Pain (Lumbar Radiculopathy)The leg-dominant branch of the low back pain triage. Four subjective items do nearly all the diagnostic work, the objective examination is a safety baseline rather than a diagnosis, and the answer about surgery changes entirely with how long the leg pain has already lasted.
- SlidesCaseload 3Lumbar Discogenic Pain (internal disc disruption)The lumbar answer to the cervical discogenic page, and it comes out the other way on all three numbers. The reference standard is graded a level higher, the disc is the front runner in its own differential rather than a distant third, and there is one physical examination test — centralisation — that rules the disc in hard and rules nothing out. What none of that buys you is a line in the diagnosis box.
- SlidesCaseload 6Sacroiliac Joint (SIJ) Dysfunction / Pelvic Girdle PainTwo patterns share one joint and they are not the same problem. Split pregnancy-related pelvic girdle pain off in the first thirty seconds and everything downstream diverges — the prevalence, the tests, the treatment with evidence behind it, and the prognosis you are allowed to give. The pain provocation cluster is real and modest: it crosses the joint off far better than it writes it in, and the palpation and motion family it is usually taught beside has never been validated against anything.
- SlidesCaseload 12Lumbar Spinal Canal Stenosis (Neurogenic Claudication)The pattern where the history does nearly all the work and the scan does less than the patient thinks it does. Older, often bilateral, walking-limited, flexion-eased — and the differential that can actually kill sits in the arteries rather than the canal.
- SlidesAbdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA)Deep, constant, non-mechanical lumbar or abdominal pain in an older patient with vascular risk, unchanged by anything you do to it. You are not diagnosing an aneurysm. You are noticing that nothing about this pain behaves like a musculoskeletal problem, and acting on that.
- SlidesCauda Equina Syndrome (CES)The pattern where your job is not to diagnose it but to notice it and get it out of your hands the same day. The red flags are specific, not sensitive — present earns an MRI, absent earns nothing — so roughly one in five to one in ten of the people you correctly refer will have it, and that ratio is the system working, not you failing.
- SlidesChronic Non-Specific Low Back PainPersistent low back ache beyond twelve weeks with variable location, unpredictable aggravators, fatigue, poor sleep and fear of movement. It has the deepest evidence stack on CliniStudy — a Cochrane review, three guidelines that agree, and a Lancet Rheumatology paper on long-term effectiveness that is the honest counterweight to all of them.
- SlidesLumbar Instability (Clinical Lumbar Segmental Instability)Recurrent back pain from trivial movements, with a sense of the back being uncoordinated. A common presentation under a contested label — what the term can and cannot carry.
- SlidesLumbar Postural Pain (Sustained-Posture Low Back Pain)Dull low back ache that builds through a day of sitting and eases within minutes of moving. High volume, low complexity, and the one where students most often teach the wrong model.
- SlidesSpinal Metastases (and Metastatic Spinal Cord Compression)Constant, deep, unremitting back pain that is worse at night or lying down, in someone with a history of cancer, unexplained weight loss or fatigue. The classic pearl — night pain plus a cancer history means image immediately — is the part that survives scrutiny. Most of the rest of the red-flag list does not, and the emergency is not the metastasis but the cord compression.
- SlidesSpondylolisthesis (Isthmic and Degenerative)Local or bilateral lumbar pain, worse with extension and prolonged standing, eased by rest or flexion, sometimes with a sense of slipping. Isthmic and degenerative spondylolisthesis are often taught as one entry — they are two conditions in two different people, and only one of them has a guideline.
This is a learning tool. It does not diagnose patients and does not replace your clinical educator.
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CliniStudy is in beta. One tap is enough — it decides what gets fixed first.