title: Low back pain in rural Tibet.
abstract: In a baseline assessment of 30 rural villages surrounding Shigatse City, Tibet, many people, especially women, identified low back pain as a serious health problem. Consequently, we aimed to establish the prevalence of such pain and to develop appropriate interventions. We did a cross-sectional study of the prevalence of low back pain and related functional disability using two-stage random cluster sampling. We included 499 adults aged at least 15 years from 19 villages. The point prevalence of low back pain was 34.1% (95% CI 27.9-40.3% [170 people]); the 12-month prevalence was 41.9% (35.5-48.3% [209 people]). 100 (20%) villagers had substantial functional disability associated with low back pain. Low back pain is likely to be an important and under recognised problem in rural societies like Tibet.
authors.affiliation: Burnet Institute, Centre for International Health, PO Box 2284, Victoria 3001, Melbourne, Australia. dhoy@burnet.edu.au
authors.forename: Damian
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hoy
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Toole
authors.forename: Damien
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Morgan
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Morgan
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D017116:Low Back Pain / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D015995:Prevalence; D012424:Rural Population; D018609:Tibet / Q000453:epidemiology