Technical Report: Measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults

Objective: Low back pain (LBP) places a large burden on society through health professional services and medication use, and interferences with work, normal and physical activities. Widely used and accepted questionnaires for measuring the impact of musculoskeletal pain (including LBP) exist, but do...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Coenen, Pieter, Smith, Anne, O’Sullivan, Peter, Beales, Darren, Straker, Leon
Format: Report
Published: Curtin University 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/57585
_version_ 1848760062606049280
author Coenen, Pieter
Smith, Anne
O’Sullivan, Peter
Beales, Darren
Straker, Leon
author_facet Coenen, Pieter
Smith, Anne
O’Sullivan, Peter
Beales, Darren
Straker, Leon
author_sort Coenen, Pieter
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Objective: Low back pain (LBP) places a large burden on society through health professional services and medication use, and interferences with work, normal and physical activities. Widely used and accepted questionnaires for measuring the impact of musculoskeletal pain (including LBP) exist, but do not cover all these aspects and may be too lengthy for some epidemiologic research and clinical practice settings. We evaluated the use of five single items of LBP impact on professional service, medication, and interferences with work, normal and physical activities; and compared these five items against established validated questionnaires of LBP disability and multi-dimensional screening of pain disability. Methods: We performed cross-sectional analyses of two population-based cohorts (with young adults and middle-aged adults). In both cohorts, LBP (Nordic questionnaire) and LBP impact (using the proposed five single items) were assessed. Validated questionnaires for multi-dimensional screening of long-term musculoskeletal pain disability (Orebro Musculoskeletal Pain Questionnaire) for young adults and LBP disability (Oswestry Disability Index) for middle-aged adults were used. Results: In both cohorts, participants who reported LBP with impact on the proposed items displayed higher scores on validated questionnaires compared to those reporting LBP without impact. Number of LBP impacts increased with increasing scores on validated questionnaires and showed high predictive value. The five proposed items of LBP impact are able to distinguish people with different clinically important scores (from established questionnaires), showing their construct validity. Conclusion: The described items provide a relevant and feasible tool to establish LBP impact in epidemiological research and clinical practice.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T10:09:48Z
format Report
id curtin-20.500.11937-57585
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T10:09:48Z
publishDate 2017
publisher Curtin University
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-575852021-09-17T09:07:42Z Technical Report: Measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults Coenen, Pieter Smith, Anne O’Sullivan, Peter Beales, Darren Straker, Leon Low back pain Disability Young adults Middle-aged adults Raine Study Objective: Low back pain (LBP) places a large burden on society through health professional services and medication use, and interferences with work, normal and physical activities. Widely used and accepted questionnaires for measuring the impact of musculoskeletal pain (including LBP) exist, but do not cover all these aspects and may be too lengthy for some epidemiologic research and clinical practice settings. We evaluated the use of five single items of LBP impact on professional service, medication, and interferences with work, normal and physical activities; and compared these five items against established validated questionnaires of LBP disability and multi-dimensional screening of pain disability. Methods: We performed cross-sectional analyses of two population-based cohorts (with young adults and middle-aged adults). In both cohorts, LBP (Nordic questionnaire) and LBP impact (using the proposed five single items) were assessed. Validated questionnaires for multi-dimensional screening of long-term musculoskeletal pain disability (Orebro Musculoskeletal Pain Questionnaire) for young adults and LBP disability (Oswestry Disability Index) for middle-aged adults were used. Results: In both cohorts, participants who reported LBP with impact on the proposed items displayed higher scores on validated questionnaires compared to those reporting LBP without impact. Number of LBP impacts increased with increasing scores on validated questionnaires and showed high predictive value. The five proposed items of LBP impact are able to distinguish people with different clinically important scores (from established questionnaires), showing their construct validity. Conclusion: The described items provide a relevant and feasible tool to establish LBP impact in epidemiological research and clinical practice. 2017 Report http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/57585 10.4225/06/5a1d2421d0f5d https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Curtin University fulltext
spellingShingle Low back pain
Disability
Young adults
Middle-aged adults
Raine Study
Coenen, Pieter
Smith, Anne
O’Sullivan, Peter
Beales, Darren
Straker, Leon
Technical Report: Measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults
title Technical Report: Measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults
title_full Technical Report: Measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults
title_fullStr Technical Report: Measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults
title_full_unstemmed Technical Report: Measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults
title_short Technical Report: Measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults
title_sort technical report: measuring the impact of low back pain in two population-based cohort studies of young and middle-aged adults
topic Low back pain
Disability
Young adults
Middle-aged adults
Raine Study
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/57585