• Eur Spine J · Apr 2022

    Association between back and neck pain and workplace absenteeism in the USA: the role played by walking, standing, and sitting difficulties.

    • Louis Jacob, Guillermo F López-Sánchez, Hans Oh, Igor Grabovac, Sinisa Stefanac, Jae Il Shin, Mark A Tully, Rubén López-Bueno, Ai Koyanagi, Yvonne Barnett, Josep Maria Haro, and Lee Smith.
    • Research and Development Unit, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Dr. Antoni Pujadas, 42, 08830, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
    • Eur Spine J. 2022 Apr 1; 31 (4): 926-934.

    PurposeThere is a paucity of literature identifying factors that influence the back and neck pain (BNP)-workplace absenteeism relationship. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the association between BNP and workplace absenteeism and potential mediating variables in a large sample of the US population.MethodsNationally representative data collected in 2019 from the RAND American Life Panel (ALP) were used for this retrospective study. Workplace absenteeism was defined as the number of days of absence in the past 12 months for health-related reasons (count variable), while BNP corresponded to the presence of back pain due to spinal stenosis, back pain due to other causes, or neck pain (dichotomous variable). Control variables included sex, age, ethnicity, marital status, education, occupation, annual family income, health insurance, obesity, and diabetes. There were eight influential variables (depression, anxiety, sleep disorder, alcohol dependence, opioid dependence, walking difficulty, standing difficulty, and sitting difficulty). The association between BNP and workplace absenteeism was analyzed using a negative binomial regression model.ResultsThere were 1,471 adults aged 22-83 years included in this study (52.9% of men; mean [standard deviation] age 44.5 [13.0] years). After adjusting for control variables, BNP was positively and significantly associated with workplace absenteeism (incidence rate ratio = 1.40, 95% confidence interval: 1.07-1.83). Walking, standing, and sitting difficulties individually explained between 24 and 43% of this association.ConclusionsWorkplace interventions focusing on the management of BNP and overcoming difficulties in walking, standing, and sitting, potentially utilizing exercise, therapy, and ergonomic interventions, may prevent absenteeism.© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…