How Prevalent is Neck/Shoulder Dysfunction in Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain?
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Jessica Angowski
CoPIs:
Macie Ditillo, Meaghan Dowdell
College:
The College of Health Professions and Human Services
Major:
Physical Therapy
Faculty Research Advisor(s):
John Lee, Carla Enriquez
Abstract:
Purpose: To determine the prevalence of patients with CLBP who also present with neck/shoulder dysfunction in the outpatient orthopedic physical therapy setting to try to better understand the cause of these musculoskeletal conditions presenting at the same time.
Subjects: 24 participants with a chief complaint of low back pain. The participants were recruited from three different outpatient physical therapy clinics in New Jersey.
Methods: All participants completed a 21-question survey. The questions determined whether or not the participants experienced CLBP and concurrent neck/shoulder dysfunction. In addition, it assessed participants' demographics, occupation, recreational activities/hobbies, activity levels, history of autoimmune diseases, and prevalence and type of low back pain and/or neck/shoulder pain. The survey was created, distributed and analyzed using Google Survey. The authors received approval from Kean University’s IRB to implement the survey in the clinical setting.
Results: Of the 24 individuals who completed the survey, 76.47% reported both LBP and neck/shoulder dysfunction. The average age of individuals with concurrent chronic LBP and neck/shoulder pain was 51.85, with 69.23% being female. Interestingly, all of the individuals who reported a history of autoimmune disease (n=5) also reported concurrent chronic low back pain and neck/shoulder dysfunction. The majority of the individuals with concurrent chronic LBP and neck/shoulder pain described the onset of their LBP pain as “gradual onset not following a specific incident” (46.15%), however the onset of their neck/shoulder pain was described as “sudden onset following a specific incident” (38.46%) and “gradual onset following specific incident” (30.76%). A majority of the participants with concurrent chronic low back pain and neck/shoulder pain reported physical activity levels greater than three times a week (n=10, 76.92%). Only three participants reported activity levels less than 3 days a week (23.07%) (Table 5). When participants in the concurrent chronic low back pain and neck/shoulder pain group described their occupations, 38.5% reported being unemployed/retired and 23.1% reported sitting for most of the day.
Conclusion: Amongst participants who had chronic LBP, there was a prevalence of concurrent neck/shoulder dysfunction of 76.47%. Our hypothesis that there will be a high prevalence of neck/shoulder dysfunction in individuals who experience chronic LBP has been supported within our study.
Clinical Relevance: As authors of this study, we recommend physical therapists and other clinicians to screen for neck/shoulder dysfunction when evaluating patients with LBP, and vice versa. Drawing from the results of our study, there is a high prevalence that these two conditions coexist. Therefore, it is likely that an individual experiencing one of these conditions may be experiencing the latter.