The patient is prone and the knee is passively flexed with the examiner's hand at the patient's ankle; the hip is then passively extended by placing the examiner's hand anteriorly, and superior to the knee, on the patient's distal thigh and lifting the leg upward, off of the exam table. A positive test is pain in the anterior thigh or low back; the pain is believed to be due to stretching of the irritable femoral nerve when the L2, L3, or L4 nerve roots are compressed. This test can also be positive if the patient has a lumbar radiculopathy and lumbar disk herniation, with femoral neuropathy, hip pathology, or tight iliopsoas and/or rectus femoris muscles.