Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs
Open Access

Research Article

The Association between Low Back Pain and Fatigue among Commercial Drivers

Environmental Department, Loma Linda University School of Public Health, California, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Amarilda Christensen
Environmental Department
Loma Linda University School of Public Health
California, USA
E-mail: camarilda@yahoo.com

Received date: November 20, 2012; Accepted date: January 30, 2013; Published date: February 02, 2013

Citation: Christensen A, Petersen F, Soret S, Spencer-Hwang R (2013) The Association between Low Back Pain and Fatigue among Commercial Drivers. Occup Med Health Aff 1:101. doi: 10.4172/2329-6879.1000101

Copyright: © 2013 Christensen A, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Objective: To examine the association between low back pain and fatigue among commercial drivers. Methods: A self-selected group of 90 current commercial drivers from 3 locations participated in an anonymous survey. Low back pain was assessed by the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI). Fatigue was measured by the Brief Fatigue Inventory. Multiple linear regression (MLR) was used to quantify the association between LBP and fatigue. Results: MLR showed that increased level of low back pain is a significant predictor of increased fatigue when adjusted for age, gender, BMI, job satisfaction, years and miles driven (p<0.001). Conclusion: These results confirm the existence of a significant association between back pain and fatigue in this population. This suggests that addressing the causes of back pain among drivers could reduce their level of fatigue and thereby promote improved highway safety.

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