The Prevalence of Musculoskeletal Pain in Male Cigarette Smoking Students at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran

BACKGROUND The rising trend of smoking cigarettes, especially among the youth, has become a great concern in Iranian society. Not only does smoking cigarettes harm one financially, but also it will cause immense damage to the smoker as well as the society. This paper investigated the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain and the factors affecting it in young smokers. METHODS The research has been conducted on 400 men smokers aged 18-30 studying at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Data was collected through a questionnaire containing information about age, history and amount of smoking, existence of pain and its severity according to the visual analog scale (VAS). The subjects were randomly selected while making sure the proportion of subjects from each department was appropriate. The subjects were smokers for more than two years and smoked more than five cigarettes a day. Data was analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the least significant difference (LSD) test. FINDINGS Among all studied subjects, 129 (32.25%) suffered from musculoskeletal pain. Most of the subjects (31.25%) had pain in their backs. The relationship between the duration of smoking and musculoskeletal pain, as well as that between the number of cigarettes smoked per day and the pain, was direct and significant. However, no significant relationship was found between age and pain. CONCLUSION The occurrence of musculoskeletal pain in male students was relatively high. This fact can bring irrecoverable damages to the society and would put its health at risk. It also decreases the socioeconomic improvements.