Daily text messages used as a method for assessing low back pain among workers
Lage Burström1, Håkan Jonsson2, Bodil Björ1
1Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå SE-901 87, Sweden.
Objectives:
To evaluate a method for collecting data concerning low back pain (LBP) using daily text messages and to characterize the reported LBP in terms of intensity, variability, and episodes.
Study Design And Setting:
We conducted a cohort study of LBP among workers used by a mining company. The participants were asked to answer the question "How much pain have you had in your lower back in the last 24 hours on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 = no pain and 10 = the worst pain imaginable" once a day for 5 weeks, with this process being repeated 6 months later.
Results:
A total of 121 workers participated in the first period of data collection, and 108 participated in the second period. The daily response rate was 93% for both periods, and cluster analysis was shown to be a feasible statistical method for clustering LBP into subgroups of low, medium, and high pain. The daily text messages method also worked well for assessing the episodic nature of LBP.
Conclusion:
We have demonstrated a method for repeatedly measuring of LBP using daily text messages. The data permitted clustering into subgroups and could be used to define episodes of LBP.
