Abstract
ABSTRACTOBJECTIVE 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.
Highlights
Back pain is a common complaint in industrialized societies, with chronic back pain reportedly affecting between 54.0% and 90.0% of the adult population[7]
The National Health Survey (2013), conducted by the Brazilian Ministry of Health together with the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)a, showed that 27 million adults in the country are affected by chronic disease in spine, which corresponds to 18.5% of the adult population in Brazil[6]
Wald Chi-square test. b Significant association (p < 0.05). c Related only to those schoolchildren to which the variable applies. d Those containing the response “I don’t know, it depends on the week” were excluded. According to this transversal epidemiological population study, we conclude that elementary schoolchildren present a high incidence of back pain
Summary
Back pain is a common complaint in industrialized societies, with chronic back pain reportedly affecting between 54.0% and 90.0% of the adult population[7]. It is considered a public health problem and is the most common complaint among workers in all fields. Back pain in schoolchildren has multiple causes, including physical, behavioral, genetic, and psychosocial factors[8]. Sex, age, physical exercise, length and quality of regular sleep, depression and anxiety, family history of back pain, educational level of parents and time spent watching television, using the computer, playing videogames, and seated have been identified as risk factors for developing back pain in schoolchildren[1,2,6,9,10,11,24]
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