Original Articles

Effect of General Health Status on Chronicity of Low Back Pain in Industrial Workers

Abstract

Recognizing patients at a higher risk of developing chronic low back pain (LBP) is important in industrial medicine. This study aimed to assess the power and quality of General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) for prediction of the odds of chronicity of acute LBP. This study was conducted on industrial workers. All subjects with acute LBP who met the inclusion criteria were enrolled. Demographic characteristics, occupational, physical, and mental parameters and the general health status of subjects were evaluated;  they were followed up for developing chronic LBP for one year. Cigarette smoking, high body mass index, job stress, physical load and high GHQ scores were found to be the risk factors for the progression of acute LBP to chronic LBP (P<0.05). Standing position while working, age, work experience, exercise, level of education, weekly work hours and shift work were not the risk factors for chronic LBP (P>0.05).High GHQ score can be a risk factor for progression of acute LBP to chronic LBP. The GHQ in combination with the Job Content Questionnaire can be used as a quick and simple screening tool for detection of subjects at high risk of chronic LBP when evaluating acute LBP in an occupational setting.

Koleck M, Mazaux JM, Rascle N, et al. Psycho-social factors and coping strategies as predictors ofchronic evolution and quality of life in patients with low back pain: A prospective study. Eur J Pain 2006;10(1):1-11.

Lidgren L. The bone and joint decade 2000-2010. Bull World Health Organ 2003;81(9):629.

Kent PM, Keating JL. The epidemiology of low back pain in primary care. Chiropr Osteopat 2005;13(1):13.

Thelin A, Holmberg S, Thelin N. Functioning in the neck and low back pain from a 12-year perspective: a prospective population-based study. J Rehabil Med 2008;40(7):555-61.

Ramond A, Bouton C, Richard I, et al. Psychosocial risk factors for chronic low back pain inprimary care--a systematic review. Fam Prac 2011;28(1):12-21.

Truchon M, Cote D, Fillion L, et al. low-back-pain related disability: An integration of psychological risk factors into the stress process model. Pain 2008;137(3):564-73.

Shiri R, Karppinen J, Leino-Arjas P, et al. The association between obesity and low back pain: A meta-analysis. Am JEpidemiol 2010;171(2):135-54.

Pincus T, Burton K, Vogel S, et al. A systematic review of psychological factors as predictors of chronicity/disability in prospective cohorts of low back pain. Spine 2002;27(5):E109–20.

van Tulder M, Becker A, Bekkering T, et al. Chapter 3. European guidelines for the management of acute nonspecific low back pain in primary care. Eur Spine J 2006;15(Suppl 2):S169-91.

Poitras S, Rossignol M, Dionne C, et al. An interdisciplinary clinical practice model for the management of low-back pain in primary are: the CLIP project. BMC Musculoskelet Disord 2008;9(1):54.

de Vet HC, Heymans MW, Dunn KM, et al. Episodes of low back pain: a proposal for uniform definitions to be used in research. Spine 2002;27(21):2409-16.

Tabatabaee Jabali SM, Ghaffari M, Pournik O, et al. Reliability and validity of persian version of Job Content Questionnaire in health care workers In Iran. Int J Occup Environ Med 2013;4(2):96-101.

Raeisi S, Namvar M, Golabadi M, et al. Combined effect of physical demands and shift working on low back disorders among nursing personel. J Occup Safety Ergonomics 2014;20(1):159-66.

Goldberg DP, Hillier VF. A scale version of general health questionnaire. Psychol Med 1979;9(1):139-45.

Chiu YL, Chung RG, Wu CS, et al. The effects of job demands, control, and social support on hospital clinical nurses' intention to turn over. Appl Nurs Res 2009;22(4):258-63.

Noorbala AA, Bagheri Yazdi SA, Mohammad K. The validation of general health questionnaire-28 as a psychiatric screening tool. Hakim Res J 2009;11(4):47-53.

Dadkhah B, Mohammadi M, Mozafari N. Mental health status of the students in Ardebil University of Medical Sciences, 2004. JAUMS 2006;6(1):31-6.

Mohammadbeygi A, Mohammad Salehi N, Ghamari F, et al. Depression symptoms prevalence, general health status and its risk factors in dormitory students of Arak University. J Arak Univ Med Sci 2009;12(3):116-23.

Lee JH, Kang W, Yaang SR, et al. Cohort study for the effect of chronic noise exposure on blood pressure among male workers in Busan, Korea. Am J Ind Med 2009;52(6):509-17.

Nicholas MK, Linton SJ, Watson PJ, et al. Early identification and management of psychological risk factors (“Yellow Flags”) in patients with low back pain: A reappraisal. Phys Ther 2011;91(5):737-53.

Stanton TR, Henschke N, Maher CG, et al. After an episode of acute low back pain, recurrence is unpredictable and not as common as previously thought. Spine 2008;33(26):2923-8.

Heyden JA, Chou R, Hogg-Johnson S, et al. Systematic reviews of low back pain prognosis had variable methods and results-guidance for future prognosis reviews. J Clin Epidemiol 2009;62(8):781-96.

Seyedmehdi M, Attarchi M, Ghaffari M, et al. Prognostic factors for return to work after low-back disc herniation surgery. Asia Pac J Public Health 2015;27(2):NP1775-84.

Chou R, Shekelle P. Will this patient develop persistent disabling low back pain? JAMA 2010;303(13):1295-302.

Foster N, Thomas E, Bishop A, et al. Distinctiveness of psychological obstacles to recovery in low back pain patients in primary care. Pain 2010;148(3):398-406.

Files
IssueVol 54, No 3 (2016) QRcode
SectionOriginal Articles
Keywords
General health questionnaire Job content questionnaire Low back pain

Rights and permissions
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
1.
Seyedmehdi SM, Dehghan F, Ghaffari M, Attarchi M, Khansari B, Heidari B, Yazdanparast T, Norouzi Javidan A, Emami Razavi SH. Effect of General Health Status on Chronicity of Low Back Pain in Industrial Workers. Acta Med Iran. 2016;54(3):211-217.