A Study on Prevalence of Low Back Pain among Traffic Policemen

Background: Low Back pain [LBP] is an extremely common human phenomenon. It is a significant source of long-term disability and work absence and accounts for approximately 80% for the total costs of back pain care. Work related musculoskeletal disorders and in particular low back pain, pose a major health and socioeconomic problem in modern society. Prolonged standing has become a major contributing factor for low back pain and traffic duty of police officers is one of the most common occupations for exposure to a prolonged standing for about four hours a day. Objective: To determine the prevalence of low back pain and its association with standing among traffic policemen. Methodology: The six months study was conducted on 180 subjects after obtaining the permission from the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Traffic, Bhubaneswar. These subjects were divided in to two groups of 90 each. The Group-A consisted of traffic policemen those were involved in standing for at least four hours a day and Group-B consisted of professionals from the same department other than traffic policemen those were not involved in standing activities most of the time during their duty hours. Results: There is an approximately perfect positive correlation between the levels of pain and disability index in Group-A and Group-B with r-value of 0.9926 and 0.9785 respectively. There is a significant difference between the levels of pain in Group-A and Group-B with t-value of 6.72 (p≤0.001). There is a significant difference between the levels of disability index in Group-A and Group-B with t-value of 6.33 (p≤0.001). Standing is associated with pain and disability index in Group-A more than Group-B with chi-square value of 14.4 (p≤0.001). The prevalence of pain and disability index in Group-A was 47% and in group-B, it was 20%. Conclusion: The study showed that low back pain is highly prevalent among traffic policemen and standing is significantly associated with low back pain.