Association of pain, social support and socioeconomic indicators in patients with spinal cord injury in Iran

Abstract

These novel findings will inform the development of strategies to manage pain by improving access to health-care facilities and supplies.

Prevalence and factors associated with a higher risk of neck and back pain among permanent wheelchair users: a cross-sectional study

“…In this study, the point prevalence of common spinal pain among wheelchair users was 52% for NP, 51% for TP, 41% for LBP, and 76% for pain at any spinal level (Table 1). These results are generally consistent with those from previous studies [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], including a systematic review, which found a prevalence of 47% (95% CI 43;50) for common TP and of 49% (44;55) for common LBP [8]. It should be noted that this previous review only focused on chronic (not acute) pain among persons using a wheelchair specifically due to a spinal cord injury [8], while the current study focused on all types of common spinal pain and 27% of participants used a wheelchair for reasons other than spinal cord injury ( Table 1).…”

“…This suggests that wheelchair users may be specially susceptible to suffering spinal pain. Moreover, this study shows that, in this population, suffering from spinal pain is associated with a significantly lower quality of life, which is consistent with previous studies [5,14,16]. These facts suggest that future research should be undertaken in order to: identify the factors predicting or causing spinal pain in this population, define prevention strategies and methods to reduce its impact, and assess the effectiveness, safety, and efficiency of such strategies and methods.…”

“…Although >50% of participants were single, divorced, or widow/ers, <15% lived alone, which may reflect the strength of social and family support in the Spanish culture. A previous observational study in Iran found that, among wheelchair users, social support was not associated with pain [5]. However, in this study, living alone was associated with a higher prevalence of spinal pain at any level, suggesting that, in Spain, social support and physical aid for daily living may have a protective effect on spinal pain.…”

“…This suggests that, although wheelchair users may present spinal pain and depression simultaneously, the two are not directly correlated in this specific population, that is depression is not associated with reporting spinal pain, and pain is not associated with being depressed. However, the p-value for the association between depression and PASL was 0.053, which was very close to the cut-off point for statistical significance (0.050), and many studies have found associations between pain and depression in the general population as well as among wheelchair users [5,17]. These facts suggest that the lack of association between pain and depression in this study may be due to the characteristics of the sample.…”

“…LBP is the leading cause of "years lived with disability" worldwide, while NP is the fourth [1,2]. Data gathered by previous studies suggest that wheelchair users also suffer from NP and LBP [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], and that these conditions restrict their activity, increase their time spent bedridden, and decrease quality of life [6,7,[14][15][16][17]. In fact, pain relief has been identified as one of the main unmet needs in the community of wheelchair users across different countries [18].…”