Back-related functional limitations among full-time homemakers: a comparison with women employed full-time outside the home.

Study Design: Two-year prospective study with repeated measurements.

Objectives: To describe back-related functional limitations and their evolution among full-time female homemakers and to compare them to that of women employed full-time outside the home.

Summary Of Background Data: Back pain is not limited to the formal "working" population. However, there is little information on the consequences of back pain in "nonworking" individuals.

Methods: Subjects were members of a large Health Maintenance Organization who consulted a physician for nonspecific back pain. Telephone interviews were conducted 4 to 6 weeks after the consultation and 1 and 2 years later. Back-related functional limitations were measured with a modified 16-item Roland-Morris scale. Analyses were conducted on 104 full-time homemakers and 288 women employed full-time outside the home.

Results: The mean Roland-Morris score among homemakers was 34.4% at baseline and dropped to 22.8% at 2 years. In multiple regression analyses, 2-year back-related functional limitations were significantly associated with symptoms of depression, pain intensity, and the number of days with back pain in the past 6 months measured at baseline, but not with employment status. Functional limitations were not different between homemakers and women employed outside the home, even after adjustment for confounders.

Conclusions: In this study, the functional consequences of back pain had a similar nature and 2-year evolution among full-time homemakers and women employed full-time outside the home. These results did not demonstrate an effect of formal employment on the functional consequences of back pain among women.