Evaluating Different Measures of Low Back Pain Among U.S. Manual Materials Handling Workers: Comparisons of Demographic, Psychosocial, and Job Physical Exposure.

Objective: To examine differences in demographic, psychosocial, and job physical exposure risk factors between multiple low back pain (LBP) outcomes in a prospective cohort of industrial workers.

Background: LBP remains a leading cause of lost industrial productivity. Different case definitions involving pain (general LBP), medication use (M-LBP), seeking healthcare (H-LBP), and lost time (L-LBP) are often used to study LBP outcomes. However, the relationship between these outcomes remains unclear.

Method: Demographic, health status, psychosocial, and job physical exposure risk factors were quantified for 635 incident-eligible industrial workers. Incident cases of LBP outcomes and pain symptoms were quantified and compared across the four outcomes.

Results: Differences in age, gender, medical history, and LBP history were found between the four outcomes. Most incident-eligible workers (67%) suffered an LBP outcome during follow-up. Cases decreased from 420 for LBP (25.4 cases/100 person-years) to 303 for M-LBP (22.0 cases/100 person-years), to 151 for H-LBP (15.6 cases/100 person-years), and finally to 56 for L-LBP (8.7 cases/100 person-years). Conversely, pain intensity and duration increased from LBP to H-LBP. However, pain duration was relatively lower for L-LBP than for H-LBP.

Conclusion: Patterns of cases, pain intensity, and pain duration suggest the influence of the four outcomes. However, few differences in apparent risk factors were observed between the outcomes. Further research is needed to establish consistent case definitions.

Application: Knowledge of patterns between different LBP outcomes can improve interpretation of research and guide future research and intervention studies in industry.