PREVALENCE AND SEVERITY OF BACK PAIN IN L UBECK

Back pain is one of the most common health problems which plays a lead ing role in many statistics of the German health care system. In this paper, a hierarchical model for grading of back pain is proposed and a pplied to data from a population-based survey. In a mail survey of 310 9 German residents of Lubeck (age 25-74 years, resonse rate 81%), we f ound a point prevalence of back pain of 39 % and a 12-month prevalence of 75%. Women were slightly more often affected by back pain, for the point prevalence, a reversed u-shaped effect of age was observed. Usi ng pain intensity and functional limitation as grading criteria, appro x, half of the back pain prevalence was assigned to the class of less severe cases. The proportion of moderate or severe cases increased alm ost monotonously with age. Our results indicate that even simple gradi ng criteria may be used to obtain more informative epidemiologic findi ngs. Depending on the specific application and research question it ma y be useful to construct an index which includes additional variables of the grading model.