The risk factors of patient’s have low back pain applied to policlinic of Algology department

Abstract

Purpose: To study the risk factors that triggered the low back pain such as age, gender, marital status, occupation, education level, smoking and alcohol consumption of patients who applied to Algology Polyclinic.
Material and Method: The patients’ age, gender, occupation, marital status, education, economic level, smoking and alcohol consumption are asked and entered in to “Pain Assessment Form”. When the education levels were questioned, their last education level is asked; when their economic level was questioned, the answers of patients were considered without restricting them between limits.
Results: Out of 772 patients, 200 of them had mechanical low back pain. 23,5% had hernia nucleous pulposus, 20% had facet joint degeneration, 18,5% had narrow spinal channel, 7,5% had sakroiliac joint degeneration, 20,1% had more than one pathology, 10,5% had other pathologies. Low back pain did not differ according to age and gender. Students had significantly low, whereas workers had significantly high low back pain (p=0,005). Of the patients with low back pain, 170 of them were married, 30 widow or single (p=0,059). With higher education the pain significantly decreased (p=0,001). With low economic levels, more pain was examined (p=0,042). There was a correlation between low back pain and smoking (p=0,030, but there was not any correlation between low back pain and alcohol consumption (p=0,638).
Conclusion: Lower education, lower economic level, to work in heavy jobs and smoking were correlated with low back pain. It was concluded that by taking precautions that lower risk factors, low back pain can be decreased.