A cross-sectional study of risk factors associated with back pain among administrative female employees in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background: Back pain is a common concern among sedentary office workers. The objective of this study is to evaluate the intensity of back pain in sedentary administrative workers, the effect of working conditions and duration of working hrs on the back pain and to determine the disability types associated with back pain among administrative staff.

Conclusion: There is strong correlation between participants BMI and the impairment level of walking, sitting and social life. The majority of women having work related back pain are of young age. Therefore, health education may be effective to assess and give them the right instructions to live without back pain or to reduce the pain if exist. A questionnaire was distributed among females working in both governmental and private institutions in Riyadh, 100 participants included, all administrative desk-jobs employees between 20 years to 40 years of age. There result was assessed using Oswestry Disability Index for measuring lower back pain disability, and a short version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire was used to assess physical activity. The data was analyzed by SPSS V16.0.

Results: In this study 26%of the participants are < 28 years of age, and the mean BMI of the participants is 26. Around 20% of the participants have back pain for 1-3 years. The Oswestry Index showed 38% of participants did not experience any pain, 32% are complaining of moderate back pain while 22% have very mild back pain, and only 4% suffered severe pain. The study showed 68% of the participant who are affected by the pain did need any assistance with their daily personal care. As for the number of missing working days 44.4% stated that they did not miss any day because of back pain, while 24.8% reported missing 1-2 days because of disabling pain.

Conclusion: There is strong correlation between participants BMI and the impairment level of walking, sitting and social life. The majority of women having work related back pain are of young age. Therefore, health education may be effective to assess and give them the right instructions to live without back pain or to reduce the pain if exist.