Back Pain: Number One Cause of Disability Worldwide

There is a worldwide effort being undertaken by the Global Burden of Disease 2010 Project to identify detrimental health conditions throughout the world. Seven of the studies undertaken by this group as well as accompanying commentaries have appeared in The Lancet, a British medical journal. The global disease burden is a computation of death and disability and its overall cost.

One of the most interesting studies involves a massive collaboration between the World Health Organization, the Institute for health Metrics and Evaluation which is the coordinating center of this endeavor, the University of Queensland School of Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the University of Tokyo, Imperial College London that delineates the extent of musculoskeletal conditions throughout the world.

The Global Burden of Disease 2010 Project found that neck and back pain are respectively the number four and number one causes of disability worldwide. The worldwide burden of disability from musculoskeletal conditions is much larger than they were only 20-30 years ago. The estimates of people suffering from musculoskeletal conditions worldwide is staggering with an estimated 632.045 million people suffering low back pain and another 332.049 suffering neck pain.

Additionally, people are living much longer which adds to the health burden because age is usually accompanied by pain, disability, and disease at levels not previously seen.

Dr. Scott Haldeman holds both a Doctor of Chiropractic degree and a degree in Medicine (meaning he is both a chiropractor and medical doctor) who chaired the 2000-2010 Bone and Joint Decade Task Force on Neck Pain and Its Associated Disorders of the Global Burden of Disease 2010 Project. Dr. Haldeman notes that musculoskeletal conditions such as back pain, neck pain, and arthritis affect more than 1.7 BILLION people throughout this world.

With over 1.7 billion people suffering from back pain, neck pain, and arthritis that makes musculoskeletal conditions a greater impact on people than HIV/AIDS, tropical diseases that includes malaria, disasters from nature, and all of the neurological conditions combined. And do not confuse the term “health burden” with deaths from these causes. It is the cost of long-term deleterious health problems.

When considering the costs of “years living with disability,” musculoskeletal conditions are only second to mental and behavioral disorders. Overall, musculoskeletal conditions are the sixth leading cause of death and disability with cardiovascular disease, neonatal diseases (newborn baby diseases in the first month of life), neoplasms (a new growth of tissue that serves no physiological function… think “tumor”), and mental or behavioral disorders being a greater threat to death and disability than musculoskeletal conditions.

Low back pain alone accounts for more of a global disease burden than malaria, preterm birth complications, COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease such as emphysema or chronic bronchitis that is an irreversible obstruction in the airway causing impediments to the ability to exhale air from the lungs), tuberculosis, diabetes, or lung cancer.

When calculations are done to combine the global disease burden of low back pain with that of neck pain these two conditions account for more of a global disease burden than all other diseases and health depleting conditions except ischemic heart disease. This makes the combination of low back and neck pain a greater global disease burden than HIV/AIDS, malaria, lower respiratory infections, stroke, breast cancer and lung cancer combined, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression, or injuries from traffic accidents.