THE PREVALENCE OF LOW-BACK-PAIN IN THE LITERATURE - A STRUCTURED REVIEW OF 26 NORDIC STUDIES FROM 1954 TO 1993

Study Design. A systematic review was done for all prevalence studies on low back pain in the Nordic population between 1954 and 1992 that c ould be identified. Objective. To investigate the homogeneity of data. Summary of Background Date, Costs resulting from low back pain are st eadily increasing, but it is not known whether this has been caused by changes in healthcare behavior or whether there is an underlying incr ease in the occurrence of low back pain in the general population. The prevalence rate of low back pain has been continually estimated over the last 40 years, but are the studies sufficiently homogeneous to all ow pooling of data? Methods. Twenty-six population-based epidemiologic surveys on the occurrence of low back pain in the Nordic countries we re assessed for the following criteria: quality of the report accordin g to a checklist related to the representativeness of the study sample , quality of data, and definition of low back pain; study design (stud y population, definition of low back pain, and recall periods); poolab ility of data, taking into account the quality of the report, the defi nition of low back pain, type of population, age, and sex. Results, On ly 10 studies fulfilled a minimum of 75% of the methodologic criteria. There were large differences between studies regarding study design, and the poolability of data was limited to a few studies, none of whic h fulfilled all of the above criteria. Conclusion. A more stringent, s ystematic, and uniform methodologic approach to studying the prevalenc e (or incidence) of back pain is needed.