Prevalence of low back pain among a group of Turkish men and its effect on quality of life

Objective: to assess the prevalence of low back pain (lbp) in a turkish male population, and its impact on their quality of life (qol). methodology: this is a cross-sectional study conducted on people aged 30 years and above in a western town of turkey between july, 1st and aug., 31st 2009. the questionnaire included information about the participants’ sociodemographic characteristics; information concerning the lbp, and the sf-36 quality of life scale (sf-36) form. the statistical analysis was carried out using chi-square (x2), student’s t test, and one-way anova test, with a value of p<0.05 statistically significant. results: the prevalences of obesity and lbp were 17.1% and 46.3%, respectively. the mean scores for subjects with lbp from all the domains in the sf-36 scale were significantly lower than those of subjects without lbp (p<0.05, per one). the prevalence of those with mechanical lbp was 78.7% and that of those with non mechanical was 21.3%. in all the domains of sf-36, as the severity of lbp increased, the scores received from the domains of sf-36 showed decrease (p<0.05, per one). conclusion: low back pain (lbp) is very common among men, especially older ages which reduces the quality of life seriously