Quantification and classification of low back pain severity based on Aberdeen low back pain scale

Abstract

Occupational low back pain (LBP) remains the leading safety and health challenge for many industries. The present study was focused to evaluate the physical demands of the manual material handling task in terms of back pain to assess the potential risk of injury. This investigation measures the prevalence of low back pain of rice mill workers in Rudrapur block, District Udhamsingh Nagar, Uttarakhand. Sixty workers, extensively involved in manual material handling (MMH) task (including, loading, unloading, stacking, filling carrying of rice or paddy sack etc.) were investigated for the presence of low back pain and associated personal and workplace risk factors and symptoms. The severity, intensity; frequency, duration and medication of low back pain was assessed utilizing the ‘Aberdeen Low Back Pain Scale’ developed by Ruta and Garratt (1994) on the basis of scoring in terms of light, moderately light, heavy , very heavy and extremely heavy back pain. The interpretation of scores revealed that 18.33 % respondents were falling under the category of moderately light pain (M), 66.66 % respondents were under heavy back pain (H), only 15 % were under the category of very heavy back pain (V), whereas none of the respondents were under the category of light pain (l) and extremely heavy pain (E). It was concluded that there remains an interest in developing integrated models to predict LBP among Rice mill workers using ergonomic and psychosocial factors as well as control strategies to reduce risk of injury.