What are the common causes of back pain?

Back pain is really, really common. We see so many patients with all sorts of causes for back pain. Probably the most common one we see is musculoskeletal back pain. And again, this can be acquired from all sorts of reasons, simply from back sprain to poor posture. Even things like stress can cause muscle spasm, which can result in back pain. So we see so many variations of back pain. The challenge sometimes is to do the, taking an accurate history and finding out what are the mechanisms for that back pain? You know, is it as simple as something as someone being overweight with poor posture that's affecting their lumbar spine? Or, you know, have they got a disc prolapse or is there something pinching on the, on one of the lumbar vertebrae cause sort of sciatica type pain. In more serious situations we need to exclude you know whether there's cord compression or not. So really that the history taking is really crucial in determining what is the cause of the back pain and then coming up with an action plan that's appropriate for the patient in terms of what they can manage.