Prevalence of Abnormal Body Posture among Chinese Children and Adolescents: A large population (158,584) -based cross-sectional study

Abstract

Objectives: Poor body posture in adulthood is often formed from the childhood, and individuals with severe abnormal body posture may associated with the progress to scoliosis. However, there is still a lack of epidemiological evidence in the prevalence of adolescent abnormal body posture compared to scoliosis. Methods: We sample a large representative dataset comprising data collected from 1th to 12th graders using a multistage, stratified-cluster, random-sampling method. Our sample consisted of 158.584 children and adolescents who were screened by visual inspection of clinical signs, the forward-bending test, and the measurement of angle of trunk rotation (ATR). Results: The overall prevalence of abnormal body posture in Chinese children and adolescents was 65.3%, around 3.7% of children and adolescents were referred for radiography. According to gender and age, girls had a higher prevalence of abnormal body posture than boys (76.0% vs. 56.6%, p<0.001), students aged 10-15 and >15 years old had a higher prevalence of abnormal body posture than students <10 years old (64.8% and 71.1% vs. 41.3%, p<0.001). Conclusion: Our findings showed that Chinese children and adolescents have a significantly higher prevalence of abnormal body posture, girls and older students may be an especially high-risk group. Keywords: abnormal body posture, adolescent, children, prevalence, school screening program