Back pain prevalence and associated factors in children and adolescents: an epidemiological population study

Abstract

OBJECTIVE To identify the prevalence of back pain among Brazilian school children and the factors associated with this pain.METHODS All 1,720 schoolchildren from the fifth to the eight grade attending schools from the city of Teutonia, RS, Southern Brazil, were invited to participate in the study. From these, 1,597 children participated. We applied the Back Pain and Body Posture Evaluation Instrument. The dependent variable was back pain, while the independent one were demographic, socioeconomic, behavior and heredity data. The prevalence ratio was estimated by multivariate analysis using the Poisson regression model (α = 0.05).RESULTS The prevalence of back pain in the last three months was 55.7% (n = 802). The multivariate analysis showed that back pain is associated with the variables: sex, parents with back pain, weekly frequency of physical activity, daily time spent watching television, studying in bed, sitting posture to write and use the computer, and way of carrying the backpack.CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of back pain in schoolchildren is high and it is associated with demographic, behavior and heredity aspects.

School Bag Usage, Postural and Behavioral Habits and Its Effect on Back Pain Occurrence Among School Children

“…However, the result of the present study was higher than that the results of [10] who conducted a study among Egyptian school girls aged from 11-14 years showed that less than half of girls suffered from back pain. Another study conducted in India by [14] they showed that the prevalence of back pain in the last three months among school children aged 11-16 years was fifty five percent. The difference in the percentage value of back pain may be due to difference in age group, gender, sample size, recall period (some studies used one-month, two-month or three month recall period).…”

“…Epidemiological study reported that back pain was experienced by 76.2% of children and youth aged [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] from the area of the Southeast of Poland [6]. In Egypt, a cross-sectional study was conducted among Egyptian school girls aged 11-14 years by [10] showed that the prevalence of back pain was high (45.8).…”

“…Back pain is not due to a specific single condition, but there are several risk factors that may be associated with the occurrence of nonspecific back pain in children and adolescents including, age, gender [6,7] participation in sports activities for long time [11] time spent per day watching television, using the computer and playing video games [13] Poor life style habits and prolonged static sitting in bad posture [13] psychosocial factors and family history of back pain [14]. Also, carrying heavy school bags is one of the major important causes of back pain among school children [15].…”

“…Body postures adopted by school children during activities of daily life such as carrying school bag, sitting to write and use the computer, lifting objects from the floor and sleeping postures are considered by health professionals as the risk factor for the occurrence of back pain [14]. Some studies evaluated the relationship between postural habits when watching television and using the computer and back pain confirmed that back pain is highly prevalent, has a significant impact on late adolescence, and associated with inappropriate home postural habits [18,19].…”

Three-dimensional evaluation of pelvic posture in adolescents with and without a history of low back pain*

“…A number of studies have investigated the potential predictors of LBP in adolescents, including smoking habit, age, sex, high physical activity level, time spent watching television, inappropriate home postural habits, and carrying a heavy backpack (6)(7)(8)(9)(10). While postural alteration has been considered as a possible risk factor for adolescent LBP (8), the literature regarding this topic is scarce.…”