Nonspecific Low Back Pain in 5000 Iranian School-age Children

Abstract

Low back pain (LBP) is common in adult population, and it is becoming a serious health concern in adolescents. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of nonspecific LBP and associated risk factors in school-age children. After ethical approval, a cross-sectional study was conducted on 5000 randomly recruited secondary schoolchildren aged 11-14 years in the north of Iran. A structured questionnaire including questions concerning demographic, mechanical, and lifestyle data as well as the prevalence and characteristics of LBP was used. Of the original sample, 4813 (96.2%) children returned the questionnaire. Point, last month, last 6 months, and annual prevalence were 15%, 14.4%, 15.6%, and 17.4%, respectively. No association was found between school bag weight and prevalence of LBP (P=0.824). Low back pain was significantly correlated with age (P=0.000), position and time spent watching television (P=0.028 and P=0.002, respectively), position and duration of homework (P=0.021 and P=0.012, respectively). There was no association between LBP and body mass index (P=0.596) or between LBP and sex (P=0.412). The results indicated that the prevalence of LBP in schoolchildren is relatively high. Further studies focusing on the effect of different preventive strategies to reduce the impact of such a problem in schoolchildren is strongly recommended.

Reproducibilidad del cuestionario para determinar dolor lumbar inespecífico y sus características en escolares de 7 a 12 años

“…Los resultados mostraron coeficientes Kappa entre 0,71 y 1,00. Por su parte, Mohseni-bandpei et al (1) crearon un cuestionario dirigido a niños iraníes y evaluaron su reproducibilidad aplicándolo dos veces con un intervalo entre pruebas de una semana a 200 niños, como resultado mostraron un alpha de Cronbach ≥ 0,84, el cual no evalúa reproducibilidad sino consistencia interna. Finalmente, Jones et al (9) mencionaron la evaluación de la reproducibilidad del cuestionario usado en su estudio en 119 niños entre los 11 y 16 años con un periodo entre pruebas de una semana, sin embargo, no se presentaron los resultados de esta evaluación.…”

“…La mayoría de estudios en niños incluyen escolares mayores de 8 años (1-13) y son pocos los estudios que han tomado población de 7 y 8 años (14)(15)(16)(17) (13) siguieron por un año a 771 niños, encontrando una incidencia de dolor lumbar de 12,5 % en aquellos que tuvieron al inicio del estudio 11 años. Por otro lado, la prevalencia de vida en niños de 9 a 12 años oscila entre 10 y 36 % (2,6,7,9-11), la prevalencia de DLI en el último mes de los niños entre 7 y 14 años osciló entre 2,4 y 28 % (1,4,8,14,15); en la última semana estuvo entre 5,9 y 12,8 % (9) y la prevalencia de punto varió entre el 3 y 15,4 % (1,2).…”

Epidemiology

“…Of course, LBP caused by these factors could possibly lead to leaving work and absence. The prevalence of back pain is equal among men (27%) and women (22%), (Parent-Thirion, 2007), though it is reported that prevalence of LBP is higher in girls than in boys at school age (Jones & Macfarlane, 2009;Mohseni-Bandpei et al, 2007;Watson et al, 2002;Yao et al, 2011). The attributable proportion of occupational LBP was higher for men than women (Punnett, 2005), and the results are very widespread.…”

Epidemiology of Non-Specific Back Pain in Children and Adolescents: a Systematic Review of Observational Studies

“…In the past 6 month the NSBP prevalence ranged from 15, 6% [34] to 61, 1% [44] and in the last year NSBP prevalence ranged from 17, 4% [34] to 54, 1% [31]. Table 2 shows the 3, 6 months and 1-year prevalence for NSBP according to the self-report period of back pain of NSBP assessed in each study and age.…”

“…The most common prevalence periods were 1-month (22 studies) [8,, 6-months (7 studies) [34,[42][43][44][45][46][47], followed by 3-months [48][49][50][51] and 1-year prevalence [9,31,34,52] with four studies each. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the included studies (author/year, study design, sample characteristics, the pain definition used and measuring tools).…”