Investigating the Effects of Biopsychosocial Interventions on Non-Specific Chronic Low Back Pain among Students

Abstract

Background: Nowadays, the largest part of the world's population in all age groups is burdened with the non-specific chronic low back pain (NS-CLBP), as a serious health condition, which might develop from a pool of bio psychosocial (BPS) factors. Against this background, the present study initially aimed to design some interventions, and then deliberate their effectiveness with reference to the BPS Model (BPSM), to relieve LBP and its resultant disabilities among students.

Study design: This study was a two-group pretest-posttest randomized clinical trial (RCT).

Methods: This study was conducted on the statistical population of the female students enrolled at the first-stage secondary school in the city of Hamadan, Iran. Applying cluster sampling, 200 students were accordingly selected, and then randomized into two groups, viz. intervention and control. The primary evaluation was also performed by the Cornell Musculoskeletal Discomfort Questionnaire (CMDQ), the 12-item Short Form Survey (SF-12), the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-S), the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS), and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Upon developing and implementing the BPSM-based interventions for 10 weekly two-hour sessions, the secondary evaluation was fulfilled, and the extracted data were analyzed, using the IBM-SPSS Statistics (v.21) software package.

Results: The independent-group t-test results revealed that the mean scores of quality of life (QoL) and physical activity significantly elevated in the intervention group, compared to those in the controls. As well, the mean value of disabilities, the amount of disorder in the lumbar region, and the VAS scores in the intervention group substantially declined, compared to those in the control one.

Conclusion: The significant variations in the BPS factors demonstrated that the development of some interventions based on the BPSM could help manage the NS-CLBP and its ensuing disabilities. Therefore, the BPSM-based interventions could be exploited to minimize the musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in students.