[Various forms of secondary lumbosciatic pain in children and adults]

Reference is made to two personal cases in underscoring the fact that meralgia paraesthetica, though regarded as a form that displays a preference for adult males, must be considered as extended to subjects of all ages when a benign or malignant neoformation irritating the L2 root or its trunk is involved. Before classifying a case as idiopathic, therefore, one must rule out the possibility of intra-abdominal disease-usually malformative in young subjects, and benign or malignant in persons of all ages. Lastly, stress is laid on the fact that atypical lumbar and sciatic pain in the adult may be secondary to aneurysm of the abdominal aorta, the common iliacs and the hypogastric. Hence the need to look for such conditions symptomatologically.