2012/01/09 by Damian Hoy, Christopher Bain, Gail Williams +7 · 38 citations
Medicine · Health Professions · #Musculoskeletal pain and rehabilitation #Spine and Intervertebral Disc Pathology #Occupational Health and Performance
paper · doi:10.1002/art.34347
OBJECTIVE: To perform a systematic review of the global prevalence of low back pain, and to examine the influence that case definition, prevalence period, and other variables have on prevalence. METHODS: We conducted a new systematic review of the global prevalence of low back pain that included general population studies published between 1980 and 2009. A total of 165 studies from 54 countries were identified. Of these, 64% had been published since the last comparable review. RESULTS: Low back pain was shown to be a major problem throughout the world, with the highest prevalence among female individuals and those aged 40-80 years. After adjusting for methodologic variation, the mean ± SEM point prevalence was estimated to be 11.9 ± 2.0%, and the 1-month prevalence was estimated to be 23.2 ± 2.9%. CONCLUSION: As the population ages, the global number of individuals with low back pain is likely to increase substantially over the coming decades. Investigators are encouraged to adopt recent recommendations for a standard definition of low back pain and to consult a recently developed tool for assessing the risk of bias of prevalence studies.