Occupational risk factors for lumbar spinal stenosis: a systematic review

Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) is a clinical condition characterized by constriction of the nerve-carrying pathways of the intervertebral foramen and spinal canal. However, research examining the relationship between occupational factors and structural alterations involving the spine as well as the risk of LSS remains limited.

This systematic literature review was performed to identify occupational risk factors for LSS.

A systematic, comprehensive literature review was carried out across PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library to identify studies published until January 2024 evaluating possible occupational risk factors of LSS (PROSPERO registration no. CRD42024513729). Extracted information included first author, year of publication, country, study design, participants, identified occupational risk factors, outcome variables, and key findings in accordance with the topic of this review. The RoBANS2 was employed for potential risk of bias evaluation.

Overall, our search and selection process yielded 8 articles suitable for review. The results of this review suggest that the risk of LSS was associated with heavy physical burden at work, such as occupational activities involving heavy lifting and other forms of lumbar spine loading. In addition, psychosocial factors in the workplace have been found to be significantly associated with both the duration and discogenic characteristics of pain in recent research.

This systematic review raise awareness regarding the risk of LSS among workers with these factors. In the future, a more detailed study is needed to understand the causative mechanism for occupational contribution to the risk of LSS.