Execution:
- The patient is standing upright with his back exposed
- Observe the midline of the back and see if you can spot a ‘sill’ like a capital ‘L’
- The examiner then runs his thumb down the midline of the patient’s spine
Positive Outcome: The examiner feels that the superior spinous process is displaced anteriorly to the inferior spinous process, hence the appearance of a ‘sill’, which can be painful to touch
Study |
Reliability | Sn | Sp | LR+ | LR- |
Ahn et al. (2015) | NA | 81.3 | 89.1 | 8.84 |
0.17 |