Low back pain and pelvic pain during pregnancy: prevalence and risk factors

About 70% of all pregnant women suffer from pelvic girdle pain (PGP)and/or low and high back pain(LBP,HBP). The risk factors for developing pelvic girdle pain and back pain in general are history of previous low back pain or pelvic or pain in previous pregnancy. In order to study the relative frequency of different kinds of backache in pregnancy and possible risk factors for developing pelvic girdle pain and low or high back pain this study performed. In a cross-sectional study included 265 pregnant women that suffered from pelvic girdle pain (PGP)and/or low and high back pain(LBP,HBP). All pregnant women were underwent a thorough physical examination and then were allocated according to kind of pain into three classification groups: pelvic girdle pain (PGP), low LBP back pain(LBP) and high back pain(HBP) and according to outbreak of pain, into four classification groups: 0-12,13-20, 21-30 and 31-40 week. Data were collected by interviewed using a questionnaire and analyzed by Chi-square, ANOVA, kruskal-wallis and Mann-Whitney tests using SPSS software. In all tests the significance level was P<0/05. A total of 265 pregnant women, majority of women (51/3%) had reported low back pain at the time of the examination. The prevalence of PGP was 27/5%, HBP was 6% and HBP and LBP together were6/8%. In the 0-12 week most backache were in low back area (53/1%), in the 13-24week were in low back area(58/2%), in the 25-30 week were in pelvic area(47/7%) and in the 31-40 week were in pelvic area(42/2%). Most common area for diffuse in women with low back pain was legs and in women with pelvic pain was thigh.The risk factors for developing pelvic girdle pain and back pain in general are history of previous low back pain or pelvic or pain in previous pregnancy. No association was found between obstetric factors and pelvic girdle pain. PGP and LBP have high prevalence in pregnant women and majority of pregnant women report Low back pain (LBP). Therefore PGP and LBP is a major health problem that to solve this problem, an alternative should be considered. To reduce the pain accurate diagnosis and then recommend specific movements and exercises under the supervision of the rehabilitation is important