Reporting on work-related low back pain: data sources, discrepancies and the art of discovering truths

Work-related pain is unique in the pain context as it is, in theory, tied to one or more workplace activities and is therefore preventable. Back pain is a leading cause of lost workplace productivity, absence from work and reduced quality of life. Aggregate estimates of the work-related contribution to the overall burden of back pain vary, which may reflect incomplete reporting, inconsistency in data collection and coding between studies and jurisdictions, or, alternatively, genuine differences between occupational groups and countries. It is therefore important for researchers, policy analysts and program development personnel in the fields of pain medicine and occupational medicine to have a thorough understanding of the appropriate use and inherent limitations of the data sources which report on this topic.