Acute and non-acute lower extremity pain in the pediatric population: part I.

Lower extremity musculoskeletal pain is common in childhood and affects up to 16% of the school-aged population (Junnilla&Cartwright, 2006a).Whilemusculoskeletal pain is common, the possible etiologies are broad, ranging from benign to serious. A presenting complaint of lower extremity musculoskeletal pain may be due to trauma, inflammatory conditions, infection, or hematologic or oncologic processes, to name a few (Junnilla & Cartwright, 2006a; Junnilla & Cartwright, 2006b; Kapoor, 2009). Although most musculoskeletal pain can be traced to a benign