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. 2021 May;6(5):e005847.
doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005847.

Completeness and quality of low back pain prevalence data in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Mamata Tamrakar  1 , Priti Kharel  1 , Adrian Traeger  1 , Chris Maher  2 , Mary O'Keeffe  1 , Giovanni Ferreira  1
Affiliations

Completeness and quality of low back pain prevalence data in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Mamata Tamrakar et al. BMJ Glob Health. 2021 May.

Abstract

Introduction: Completeness of Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study data is acknowledged as a limitation. To date, no study has evaluated this issue for low back pain, a leading contributor to disease burden globally.

Methods: We retrieved reports, in any language, based on citation details from the GBD 2017 study website. Pairs of raters independently extracted the following data: number of prevalence reports tallied across countries, age groups, gender and years from 1987 to 2017. We also considered if studies enrolled a representative sample and/or used an acceptable measure of low back pain.

Results: We retrieved 488 country-level reports that provide prevalence data for 103 of 204 countries (50.5%), with most prevalence reports (61%) being for high-income countries. Only 16 countries (7.8%) have prevalence reports for each of the three decades of the GBD. Most of the reports (79%) did not use an acceptable measure of low back pain when estimating prevalence.

Conclusion: We found incomplete coverage across countries and time, and limitations in the primary prevalence studies included in the GBD 2017 study. This means there is considerable uncertainty about GBD estimates of low back pain prevalence and the disease burden metrics derived from prevalence.

Keywords: arthritis; indices of health and disease and standardisation of rates; public Health.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: AT reports he has received research grants from numerous Government and not for profit agencies outside the submitted work. CM reports he has received research grants from numerous Government and not for profit agencies outside the submitted work. His expenses have been covered by professional associations hosting conferences he has spoken at. Flexeze provide heat wraps at no cost for the SHaPED trial that he is an investigator on. MO received a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Commission from 2018 to 2020, outside the submitted work. MT has nothing to disclose. Kharel has nothing to disclose. GF has nothing to disclose

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Number of LBP prevalence studies per country (A) and number of LBP prevalence studies per country that used an acceptable measure of LBP (B). LBP, low back pain.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of LBP prevalence studies by age group per region (A) and number of LBP prevalence studies by age group per region that used an acceptable measure of LBP (B). LBP, low back pain.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Number of LBP prevalence studies per year across countries from 1987 to 2017. LBP, low back pain.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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