Background: Low back pain (LBP) is a major disabling pathology, whose clinical, societal and economic burden remains mostly overlooked. Therefore, we aim to provide here a concise overview on the recent worldwide epidemiology of this condition. Methods: An electronic search was performed in the Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) repository, a large worldwide database of health-related data, using the keyword “low back pain”. The result of our electronic search was downloaded in comma-separated values (CSV), imported into an Excel file and analyzed. Results: The current estimates of incidence, prevalence and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) of LBPs are 245.9 million cases/year (3.2%; 15th worldwide cause), 577.0 million cases (7.6%; 15th worldwide cause) and 64.9 million DALYs (2.6% of all DALYs; 6th worldwide cause), respectively. All these measures displayed a considerable ~50% increase during the last 20 years. The burden of all LBP cases is marginally higher in women than in men, exhibits gradual increase from the birth age, reaching the peak between 40–50 years, and then progressively declining. An analysis within each age range shows that prevalence of LBP among all human diseases grows in parallel with ageing, with the most notable increase after 80 years. The risk of LBD increases in parallel with socio-demographic index (SDI), being over 3-fold higher in high than in low SDI countries. According to a linear fit based on data of the last 20 years, incidence, prevalence and DALYs of LBP may further increase by ~1.4 fold by the year 2050. Conclusions: LBP poses a significant worldwide epidemiologic burden, especially in women, adults and high SDI countries, displaying an escalating trend that is not expected to reverse soon.

Current epidemiology of low back pain

Mattiuzzi, Camilla;Lippi, Giuseppe
;
2020-01-01

Abstract

Background: Low back pain (LBP) is a major disabling pathology, whose clinical, societal and economic burden remains mostly overlooked. Therefore, we aim to provide here a concise overview on the recent worldwide epidemiology of this condition. Methods: An electronic search was performed in the Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) repository, a large worldwide database of health-related data, using the keyword “low back pain”. The result of our electronic search was downloaded in comma-separated values (CSV), imported into an Excel file and analyzed. Results: The current estimates of incidence, prevalence and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) of LBPs are 245.9 million cases/year (3.2%; 15th worldwide cause), 577.0 million cases (7.6%; 15th worldwide cause) and 64.9 million DALYs (2.6% of all DALYs; 6th worldwide cause), respectively. All these measures displayed a considerable ~50% increase during the last 20 years. The burden of all LBP cases is marginally higher in women than in men, exhibits gradual increase from the birth age, reaching the peak between 40–50 years, and then progressively declining. An analysis within each age range shows that prevalence of LBP among all human diseases grows in parallel with ageing, with the most notable increase after 80 years. The risk of LBD increases in parallel with socio-demographic index (SDI), being over 3-fold higher in high than in low SDI countries. According to a linear fit based on data of the last 20 years, incidence, prevalence and DALYs of LBP may further increase by ~1.4 fold by the year 2050. Conclusions: LBP poses a significant worldwide epidemiologic burden, especially in women, adults and high SDI countries, displaying an escalating trend that is not expected to reverse soon.
2020
Low back pain (LBP); disability; epidemiology; statistics
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/1019986
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