Abstract
Background
The incidence of backpain is unknown in children because studies have been cross-sectional or longitudinal with few follow-ups of long intervals. Children cannot be expected to remember past events of backpain correctly. Therefore data-collection must be undertaken with short intervals and using other methods than questionnaires only.
Methods and material
The 1208 children from grade 0 to grade 4, who participated in an intervention study (increased physical activity vs. “business-as-usual”) were followed with standardized questions submitted with weekly text-messages (SMS-Track). If they answered “yes” to backpain in the past week, their parents were called up, and the child was seen in person by health personnel. “Backpain” included any type of spinal pain.
Results
Our interim analyses show that compliance was 92% for responding to text-messages. Over the total risk time of 35,238 weeks, 576 reported backpain at some time (individual range 0 to 11). The incidence ratio for gender was 0.72 for boys. The 2nd to 4th school-grades had significantly higher incidence ratios (1.4-2.1) when compared to grades 0 and 1.
Conclusion
The results of these analyses show that it is possible to collect weekly incidence data on backpain in children. It was found to be surprisingly high.
Conflict of interest: None
Sources of funding: The project was funded by: Kiropraktor Fonden, Team Danmark, Nordea Foundation, The IMK-foundation, Østifterne, Brd. Hartmanns fond, Svendborg Kommune, University of Southern Denmark and University College Lillebælt.
