Red Flags in Spinal Conditions

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Original Editor - Anna Butler, Fiona Stohrer and Kat Moon .... as part of the Nottingham University Spinal Rehabilitation Project

Top Contributors - Katherine Moon, Fiona Stohrer, Anna Butler, Admin, Kim Jackson, Rachael Lowe, Naomi O'Reilly, Jess Bell, Gunilla Buitendag, WikiSysop, Claire Knott, 127.0.0.1, Tarina van der Stockt, Simisola Ajeyalemi and Shaimaa Eldib  

What are red flags?

Part of the UK guidelines of an assessment for lower back pain is too rule out serious pathology and identify red flags (Koes et al 2010). Red flags are features from a patients subjective and objective assessment which is thought to put them at a higher risk of serious pathology and warrant referral for further diagnostic assessment (Henschke et al 2013). Red flags are often a contraindication to many Physiotherapy treatments.

Although red flags have a valid role to play in assessment and diagnosis they should also be used with caution. Some guidelines contain no information on diagnostic accuracy for individual red flags, so it is the responsibility of individual practitioners to make themselves aware of these. Other guidelines even recommend immediate referral to imaging if any red flag is present, which could lead to many unnecessary referrals if clinicians did not clinically reason their referral (Downie et al. 2013).

References

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