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Low back pain’s impact upon quality of life greater than impact of knee pain

Shigeyuki M, et al. Spine. 2011. doi: 10.1097/BRS.0b013e3181fa60d1.

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Quality of life is impacted more by low back pain than knee pain, according to a study combining cross-sectional surveys of health-related quality of life with a population-based cohort of knee pain and low back pain patients.

Vertebral fracture with low back pain, the authors noted, was also strongly associated with loss of physical quality of life (QOL).

Researchers analyzed data from 767 men 40 years of age or older who participated in the Research on Osteoarthritis Against Disability study. Quality of life was assessed through the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 8 (SF-8) and EuroQOL (EQ-5D), and associations were examined between low back pain, knee pain and QOL. Presence of vertebral fracture, severity of lumbar spondylosis, and knee osteoarthritis were all analyzed for their respective impacts upon QOL as well.

Low back pain was found in the study results to have a greater impact upon QOL.

“In men with low back pain, there were few associations between Kellgren-Lawrence grade and QOL, whereas [vertebral fracture] was associated with physical QOL,” the authors added.