Chronic low back pain: a personal approach.

Sooner or later, all family physicians will face patients with chronic low back pain. This disorder does not result from the same causes and does not respond to the same treatment as acute back pain. A thorough assessment is the key to efficient treatment and should include data about familial, social, and occupational environments. The treatment should be multimodal and tailored to the patient's type of personality and to the causes of the syndrome.