Question about lost

I’m watching the 5th episode of the latest season right now and I thought of something. Remember how Jack sees the xray for a man in his fourties that had an aggressive spinal tumor (his assumption, of course) and how he said that it was located in the L4 vertabrae?
Why does he then ask that creepy leader of the others whether or not his neck hurts? Had it been a tumor in the cervical vertebrae, I would understand. But in the lumbar region?