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. 2018 Aug 23;19(1):306.
doi: 10.1186/s12891-018-2237-x.

The prevalence of low back pain in the emergency department: a descriptive study set in the Charles V. Keating Emergency and Trauma Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Jordan Edwards  1   2 , Jill Hayden  3 , Mark Asbridge  3 , Kirk Magee  4
Affiliations

The prevalence of low back pain in the emergency department: a descriptive study set in the Charles V. Keating Emergency and Trauma Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Jordan Edwards et al. BMC Musculoskelet Disord. .

Abstract

Background: While low back pain is a common presenting complaint in the emergency department, current estimates from Canada are limited. Furthermore, existing estimates do not clearly define low back pain. As such, our main objective was to estimate prevalence rates of low back pain in a large Nova Scotian emergency department using various definitions, and to describe characteristics of individuals included in these groups. An additional objective was to explore trends in low back pain prevalence in our emergency department over time.

Methods: We conducted a cross sectional analysis using six years of administrative data from our local emergency setting. We first calculated the prevalence and patient characteristics for individuals presenting with any complaint of back pain, and for groups diagnosed with different types of low back pain. We explored prevalence over time by analyzing presentation trends by month, day of the week and hour of the day.

Results: The prevalence of patients presenting to the emergency department with a complaint of back pain was 3.17%. Individuals diagnosed with non-specific/mechanical low back pain with no potential nerve root involvement made up 60.8% of all back pain presentations. Persons diagnosed with non-specific/mechanical low back pain with potential nerve root involvement made up 6.7% of presentation and the low back pain attributed to secondary factors accounted for 9.9% of back pain presentations. We found a linear increase in presentations for low back pain over the study period.

Conclusion: This is the first multi-year analysis assessing the prevalence of low back pain in a Canadian emergency department. Back pain is a common presenting complaint in our local emergency department, with most of these persons receiving a diagnosis of non-specific/mechanical low back pain with no potential nerve root involvement. Future research should concentrate on understanding the management of low back pain in this setting, to ensure this is the proper setting to manage this common condition.

Keywords: Emergency setting; Low back pain; Policy decision maker; Prevalence estimate.

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Conflict of interest statement

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Not applicable.

Competing interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow diagram of the complete study population
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Patient presentations for back pain by the hour of the day. The analysis includes data from all days of the week. Peak hours of presentation were between 9 and 11 AM
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Patients presenting with low back pain during typical work hours, defined as 9 am to 5 pm Monday to Friday (38.2%) and non-work hours (61.8%) (p < 0.05)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Presentations for back pain by day of the week
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Prevalence and absolute number of presentations of persons with a complaint of “back pain” or “traumatic back/spine injury” between July 2009 and July 2015 grouped by month. The top panels display raw data and the bottom panels report the smoothed trend analysis with a linear regression. For our estimates of prevalence, the linear regression resulted in a slope of − 0.001 and an R2 value of 0.060. For our estimates of presentations, the linear regression resulted in a slope of 0.419 and an R2 value of 0.787
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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