Back pain in children

Key words: Back pain, spinal tumours, spinal MRI

Back pain is an infrequent complaint in children. A complete history and a careful physical examination should be performed on all patients presenting with back pain. A systematic approach can diagnose the most common causes: trauma, inflammatory diseases, infection and malignancy. Starting from two clinical cases of back pain, the paper aims at underlining several peculiarities of back pain in children to convey some take-home messages to diagnose its causes.