One-third of American youth have experienced back pain in the previous year, according to research presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and reported in Medscape.
The researchers analyzed data from an epidemiologic sample of 3,669 children and adolescents with an average age of 14 years and an average body mass index of 21.6 kilograms per square meter.
Five things to know about back pain among American youth:
1. Back pain in the previous year was reported by 33.7 percent of respondents, and 4.8 percent of these respondents reported current back pain.
2. Back pain incidence was significantly associated with age — for each increasing year, approximately 4 percent more youth reported back pain in the previous year.
3. Significantly more girls than boys reported back pain in the previous year — 38.3 percent versus 29 percent, respectively.
4. Of the 1,236 respondents who experienced back pain, 68.9 percent reported having lumbar pain.
5. Reports of back pain in the evening were more common than in the morning, and 15.1 percent of respondents reported that back pain woke them up overnight.