The Prevalence of Low Back Pain Among Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Low back pain is a relatively common complaint at adolescence. In addition, a significant part of the pains are recurrent or chronic already with 14-year-old adolescents.

Low back pain in a population of school children

“…These results are in agreement with the results of Ehrmann-Feldman, who found a 1-year cumulative incidence of LBP of 17.2% [10]. A significant proportion of adolescents report recurrent or chronic pain [4,21]. In Finland, Zitting et al studied a large cohort of subjects (about 12,000) born in 1966, focusing on hospital admissions due to lumbar disc diseases.…”

“…From this study we can establish that there are few clinical signs that can help to single out school children with LBP. studies in different countries have shown that the prevalence of non-specific LBP among adolescents is close to the figures well known for adults [1,5,13,14,16,17,19,21,23]. The epidemiology of LBP and the associated factors among these age groups have been reviewed by different authors [2,3,7,9,22].…”

Low Back Pain

“…87, 138, 209 In cross-sectional studies, activity and prevalence of back pain takes on a “U” shaped function with back pain increased at the sedentary and higher activity end. 287, 307 However, in longitudinal studies, the relationship between modifying physical activity and back pain prevalence has not been well-established. 166, 257 As is the case in adults, psychological and psychosocial factors are commonly increased in children with low back pain and there is some evidence that such factors can predict future onset of low back pain.…”

Physical activity and low-back pain in schoolchildren

“…Keywords Adolescents Á Low-back pain Á Physical activity Á Prevention Á Health promotion Background Low-back pain (LBP) is frequent among schoolchildren [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. The occurrence increases with age, especially in the early teen-years [1, 2, 9, 10] so that, by age 14-17, 11-71% will have experienced at least one episode of LBP [1][2][3][4][5][9][10][11].…”

“…Recurrent LBP during childhood seems to occur among 5-19% of all children [4,5,9], and LBP in childhood may be a forerunner of LPB in adult life [12]. Findings concerning an association with gender have been ambiguous [1,2,5,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”