Upper Back Pain among Physical Therapy Students and Its Association with Gender, Body Mass Index, Study Hours and Use of cell Phones

Abstract

Introduction Musculoskeletal pain is common among Physical therapy students due to prolonged study hours and clinical practice. The objective of current study was to determine the prevalence of upper back pain among physical therapy students and its association with demographic information, length of study hours and use of cell Phones. Methods This cross sectional survey was conducted in Peshawar, Pakistan from November 2017 to March 2018. 232 students from different physical therapy institutes were included in the study through consecutive sampling. Self-administered questionnaire was used as the study conducting tool having questions regarding demographic information, Body mass index (BMI) study hours, use of cell phone and upper back pain. Results The Prevalence of upper back pain among DPT students was 44.8% (n=104) in which 33(31.7%) male students and 71(68.3%) female students had upper back pain. There was significant association between female gender and upper back pain (p-value<0.001). Nine (8.7%) underweight, 75 (72.1%) students with normal BMI, 18 (17.3%) overweight, and 2 (1.9%) obese students had upper back pain. There was no significant association between BMI and upper back pain (P=0.459). Majority of students (57.7%, n=60) who were involved in university activities like sitting looking straight during lectures on multimedia or white board for 3–5 h reported upper back pain. On the other hand majority of students (49%, n=51) whose study activities involve looking down during book reading etc for 1–2 h reported upper back pain. However, there was no significant association between activities like sitting looking straight (P=0.691) and sitting looking down (P=0.880) most of the time and upper back pain. Majority of students (43.3%, n=45) who used cell phone for more than 5 h had upper back pain and there was marginally significant association (P=0.091) between use of cell phones for long duration and upper back pain. Conclusion The frequency of upper back pain was high among physical therapy students. Female gender was highly associated with upper back pain. There was no significant association of upper back pain with BMI, study hours and use of cell phones.