Abstract
BackgroundLow back pain (LBP) is a common and costly problem throughout the United States. To achieve a greater understanding of the occupational risk factors, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) funded a low back health effects consortium, which performed several surveillance studies throughout the United States. This study combines data from the consortium research groups resulting in a data set with nearly 2000 workers in various regions of the country. The purpose of this paper is to examine prevalence and personal risk factors of low back health effects among these workers.MethodsThere were three common questions regarding history of low back health effects in the past 12 months including 1) have you had LBP lasting 7 days, 2) have you sought medical care for LBP, and 3) have you taken time off work due to LBP. The questionnaire included demographic questions. There were five data collections institutions or sites including NIOSH, Ohio State University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Texas A&M University, and University of Utah.ResultsThe 12-month period prevalence of low back pain lasting 7 days, seeking medical care, and lost time due to LBP were 25, 14 and 10%, respectively. There were no statistically significant differences in gender, age or weight between cases and non-cases for any prevalence measure. The height of workers was significantly greater in the cases compared to non-cases for all three prevalence definitions. There were significant differences among the sites on the prevalence of seeking medical care for LBP and lost time due to LBP. The Ohio State University had significantly higher prevalence rates for seeking medical care and lost time due to LBP than University of Wisconsin, University of Utah, or Texas A&M University.ConclusionLBP, the least severe low back health effect studied, had the highest prevalence (25%) and lost time due to LBP, the most severe low back health effect studied, had the lowest prevalence (10%) among nearly 2000 US manual material handling workers. There was a significant site or regional influence in prevalence rates for seeking medical care and lost time due to LBP.
Highlights
Low back pain (LBP) is a common and costly problem throughout the United States
There are several surveillance measures that have been used in the literature to investigate prevalence rates and risk factors for low back health effects including presence of LBP of any severity, LBP that resulted in the seeking of medical care, and LBP resulting in lost time from work
LBP resulting in seeking medical care has reported prevalence rates ranging from 4.5% [7] to 32% [8] and has been shown to be influenced by the length of time of symptoms [9], gender [10] and race/ethnicity [10]
Summary
Low back pain (LBP) is a common and costly problem throughout the United States. To achieve a greater understanding of the occupational risk factors, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) funded a low back health effects consortium, which performed several surveillance studies throughout the United States. There are several surveillance measures that have been used in the literature to investigate prevalence rates and risk factors for low back health effects including presence of LBP of any severity, LBP that resulted in the seeking of medical care, and LBP resulting in lost time from work. Taking time off from work, or lost time, is the least commonly used surveillance measure for low back health effects in the literature [11] and has prevalence rates between 4.6% [12] to 18% [13, 14] These surveillance measures for low back health may represent a series of cascading events that start with mild LBP, which perhaps leads to an individual seeking medical care for LBP, possibly progressing to taking time off work for LBP that may recur any number of times and culminate with disabling LBP [15]. It is theorized that evaluating these three surveillance measures in a large population may provide further insight into the progression and potential prevention of LBP leading to disability
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