Back Pain – Are Health Care Undergraduates At Risk?

BACKGROUND: To study the prevalence of low back pain in medical and nursing undergraduate students in our institutes and its association with physical activity, smoking, depression, use of computer and other variables. METHODS: It was a comparative cross sectional study carried out at two institutes of Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan during October to December 2011. Two hundred and fifteen undergraduate students representing different semesters were asked to fill out the structured questionnaire. Back pain was assessed in terms of lifetime, one year and point prevalence. Bivariate analysis was done to study the relationship between back pain and different variables; including gender, study program, smoking, computer use, depression and level of physical activity. Both the groups were compared for duration/intensity of pain, seeking medical advice and duration of computer use. RESULTS: There were 183 undergraduate students who completed the questionnaire for back pain. Mean age was 22.84 (SD ± 5.85) years. Gender distribution was nearly equal (females = 51.4%). Life time prevalence was 57.9% (72% in medical students; 41% in nursing students). Medical students were 0.47 times more at risk of having back pain (95% CI 0.15–1.48; P=0.198). Smoking (OD=0.39; 95% CI 0.04–3.6; P=0.001) and use of laptop (OD=4.9; 95% CI 1.2–19.2; P=0.031) were found to be associated with increased prevalence of back pain. Nursing students sought medical opinion more as compared to medical students but it was not significant. However duration of computer use was more in medical students which was significant (P=0.03). CONCLUSION: High lifetime prevalence of back pain was observed in undergraduate students. Medical students appeared to be more at risk. Preventive measures are required to improve the quality of life in future health care professionals.