BACK PAIN IN ADOLESCENTS OF DIFFERENT GENDERS: PREVALENCE, STRUCTURE, ASSOCIATIONS WITH RECURRENT HEADACHE

Back pain (dorsalgia) in children and adolescents is one of the pressing problems of modern medicine and attracts the attention of scientists from different countries of the world. The aim of the work was to study the prevalence and structure of back pain in adolescents depending on gender and the presence of recurrent headaches. The article analyzes gender differences in the frequency of occurrence and structure of back pain of various localizations (in the cervical, thoracic, lumbar spine and their combinations) in adolescents. The results of our own study revealed the overall prevalence of dorsalgia in 21.7% of adolescents, its more frequent occurrence in girls (27.5%) than in boys (15.3%), a higher overall prevalence of rare (38.5%) than in frequent (18.8%) episodes of back pain in the examined adolescents. Statistically significant gender differences in the prevalence of dorsalgia (both rare and frequent pain episodes) were established with a predominance in girls compared to boys. The features of the structure of dorsalgia by pain localization were determined with dominance in the cervical (28.0%) and lumbar (24.7%) spine, and a rarer occurrence of dorsalgia in thoracic (13.2%) and combined (9.2%) localization. Gender differences in the overall prevalence and structure of dorsalgia associated with recurrent headaches (RH) were revealed in the groups of examined adolescents. The fact of a higher prevalence of dorsalgias of varying frequency and localization in adolescents with RGB with a predominance of the analyzed indicators in girls has been established. The authors come to the conclusion about the need to continue scientific research on the prevalence and structure of dorsalgia in adolescent populations of different regions, the advisability of using standardized methodological approaches and examination methods for the comparability of the results of the studies conducted in order to develop sound methods for the prevention and treatment of these types of pathology, including the use of osteoprotectors such as Osteomed, Osteomed Forte, Osteo-Vit D3.