Abstract
BackgroundGlobally, low back pain (LBP) is a major public health problem affecting mainly adults of the working class and is the leading cause of disability. The estimated lifetime prevalence of LBP is 50 to 80%. From 1990 to 2015, the years lived with disability caused by LBP have scaled up by 54% with the greatest increase observed in low-middle-income countries (LMICs). LBP poses a significant socio-economic burden to the society regardless of all the technological advancement in diagnosis and intervention approaches in recent years. Despite an increase in the literature of LBP in LMICs, chronic low back pain (CLBP) is poorly investigated yet it is responsible for the largest amount of burden. The purpose of this scoping review is to map the existing evidence on the prevalence, incidence, mortality, risk factors, and cost associated with CLBP among adults in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).MethodsWe will conduct a scoping review to explore, describe, and map literature on the prevalence, incidence, mortality, risk factors, and costs associated with CLBP among adults in SSA. The search will be performed using the EBSCOhost platform by searching the following databases within the platform: Academic search complete, health source: nursing/academic edition, CINAHL with full text, Embase, PubMed, MEDLINE, Science Direct databases, Google Scholar, and the World Health Organization library databases. The search will include peer-reviewed, review articles, and gray literature. The first (title and abstract) and the second (full text) screening phases will be performed by two independent reviewers, with the third reviewer employed to adjudicate discrepancies. The reference list of all included articles will also be searched for eligible articles. This scoping review will be reported in accordance to the MOOSE and PRISMA-ScR guidelines. The NVivo 12 data analysis software will be used to generate themes, and a thematic content analysis will be used to give the narrative account of the review.DiscussionThe study anticipates finding relevant literature on the prevalence, incidence, risk factors, mortality, and cost associated with CLBP among adults in SSA. The study outcomes will aid in identifying research gaps, planning, informing policy, commissioning of future research, and funding prioritization.
Highlights
Low back pain (LBP) is a major public health problem affecting mainly adults of the working class and is the leading cause of disability
A systematic review by Morris et al investigating the prevalence of low back pain in Africa revealed that the lifetime, 1-year and point prevalence of low back pain among African populations was substantially higher than the revealed global LBP prevalence estimates [2]
Morris et al found that the point prevalence of low back pain among African countries was 39%, while the global point prevalence according to Hoy et al was 18.3% [1, 2]
Summary
Low back pain (LBP) is a major public health problem affecting mainly adults of the working class and is the leading cause of disability. From 1990 to 2015, the years lived with disability caused by LBP have scaled up by 54% with the greatest increase observed in low-middle-income countries (LMICs). Despite an increase in the literature of LBP in LMICs, chronic low back pain (CLBP) is poorly investigated yet it is responsible for the largest amount of burden The purpose of this scoping review is to map the existing evidence on the prevalence, incidence, mortality, risk factors, and cost associated with CLBP among adults in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A systematic review by Morris et al investigating the prevalence of low back pain in Africa revealed that the lifetime, 1-year and point prevalence of low back pain among African populations was substantially higher than the revealed global LBP prevalence estimates [2]. The burden attributed to low back pain is predicted to continue to increase in the coming decades, in LMICS where the healthcare infrastructure and a conglomeration of other systems are poor equipped to cope with the increasing burden of low back pain in addition to other priorities such as infectious diseases [5]
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