A screening tool for non-specific low back pain with disability in office workers: a 1-year prospective cohort study

Abstract

BackgroundHaving a screening tool with reasonable predictive ability is essential in providing information about an individual’s risk of developing a disease, allowing an examination to be conducted with limited personnel and time, and selecting the relevant individuals for therapeutic research. This study aimed to produce a screening tool to identify office workers at risk of developing non-specific low back pain (LBP) with disability, and to evaluate the tool’s predictive power.MethodsAt baseline, 615 healthy office workers filled out a self-administered questionnaire and underwent physical examination to gather potential risk factors. The incidence of LBP was collected every month thereafter. Disability level was assessed using the Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire (RMDQ). The minimum RMDQ score for categorization as LBP was 3. Logistic regression was used to select significant factors to build a risk score. The coefficients from the logistic regression model were used to develop the components of a screening tool.ResultsOver the 1-year follow-up, 8.8 % of participants reported incident LBP with disability. The screening tool for non-specific low back pain with disability in office workers comprised two items that contributed to the total score: previous history of LBP and psychological demand (assessed by the Job Content Questionnaire). The score range of the screening tool was 12 to 69. With a cut-off score of 53, the sensitivity was 65 % and the specificity was 68 %. The positive and negative predictive values were 16 and 95 %, respectively. The area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve was 0.76.ConclusionsA screening tool for non-specific low back pain with disability in office workers was developed and appears to have reasonable sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values, and negative predictive values. Further validation and impact studies of the screening tool in a new population of office workers are suggested.

Responsiveness, Reliability, and Minimally Important and Minimal Detectable Changes of 3 Electronic Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for Low Back Pain: Validation Study (Preprint)

“…[29,30,35,56,64,65] ROC AUC for the VAS ranges from 0.71 to 0.93. [35,61,[66][67][68] Our results are within these ranges at six-weeks for all but our VAS estimate at one-week, where our estimate approaches the lower border of the range.…”

Prevalence and associated occupational factors for low back pain among the bank employees in Dhaka City

“…A study revealed that long-time sedentary work, high workload, and inappropriate sitting arrangements are the contemporary causes of LBP [10]. Many studies conducted with office workers found a relationship between sitting and LBP [6,[11][12][13][14][15]. Another study suggested that the associated factors of LBP for office workers were: long office hours, working in the same posture, and continuing the same job for many years [3].…”

Responsiveness, Reliability, and Minimally Important and Minimal Detectable Changes of 3 Electronic Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for Low Back Pain: Validation Study

“…ROC AUC for the NRS ranges from 0.67 to 0.93 [ 41 , 42 , 47 , 67 , 75 , 76 ]. ROC AUC for the VAS ranges from 0.71 to 0.93 [ 47 , 72 , 77 - 79 ]. Our results are within these ranges at 6 weeks for all instruments and for all but our eVAS instrument at 1 week, where our point estimate approaches the lower border of the range.…”