A cross sectional study to determine the prevalence and risk factors of low back pain

There is a lack of quantitative data regarding exposure response relationships between low back pain (LBP) and associated risk factors among institute staff in Kurdistan Region, Iraq. This study explored such associations in an analytic cross-sectional study. Data collection was carried out with a self-administered questionnaire. A total of 70 (90%) institute staff from Koya Technical Institute (KTI) participated in this study. The findings indicated that 61.4% of KTI staff report LBP. Independent variables significantly associated with reporting LBP (P value <0.05) during past 12 months were smoking (OR=10.882; 95%CI=1.301-90.995) and job tenure (OR=3.159; 95% CI=1.072-9.312). In conclusion, LBP is significantly associated with smoking and years worked; therefore, workers should be educated on the effects of smoking not only as it relates to LBP, but also how it affects the whole body and how to quit it. This can be done through health promotion campaigns and programs sponsored by the university. Mosharaf Hossain ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] Khudhir KM, Mahmood KA, Saleh KK and Hossain M. How to cite this article: A cross sectional study to determine the prevalence and risk factors of low back pain among public technical institute staff in Kurdistan Region, Iraq [version 1; referees: 2 approved with 2017, :182 (doi: ) reservations] F1000Research 6 10.12688/f1000research.10806.1 © 2017 Khudhir KM . This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the , Copyright: et al Creative Commons Attribution Licence which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. Grant information: Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. 23 Feb 2017, :182 (doi: ) First published: 6 10.12688/f1000research.10806.1 1 1 1