Prevalence of work-related upper back and thoracic pain among health care professionals Lahore, Pakistan

Objective: To determine the prevalence of Work-related Upper Back/Thoracic pain among health care professionals of Lahore, Pakistan. Methodology: This descriptive cross sectional study was done on 883 health care professionals of Lahore above age 25 and having minimum 2 years of practice. Those having recent injury or trauma, suffering with any other systemic disease or had any surgery were excluded. Data analysis was done with SPSS version 21. Results: Mean age of respondents was 35.96 +/- 8.814 years and age was between 2666 years. Out of 883 respondents, 239(27.1%) had upper back/thoracic pain. There were 421(47.7%) female of which 132(31.3%) had upper back pain while 462(52.3%) were male of which 107(23.1%) had pain. Mean of pain intensity was 4.59 +/- 1.929. Out of 37(4.2%) surgeons, 15(40.5%) had pain, out of 188(21.3%) dentists, 63(33.5%) had pain and out of 159(18%) physical therapists, 63(39.6%) had pain. Conclusion: There was prevalence of 27.1% upper back pain among health care professionals, which was more in females with ages between 31-35 years. Among them surgeons reported highest pain followed by dentists and physical therapists. Due to pain, they had huge impact on the absenteeism from work.