Association of Musculoskeletal Disorders with Backpack carrying among school aged adolescents

Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) as one of the important multifactorial health problems among school going adolescents that might be due to back pack carrying. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between backpack standards with MSDs among students.

This was a cross-sectional designed study. The non-probability sample consisted of 159 students from four secondary and high schools in Pars Abad city, Iran, in 2019. A combination of two Nordic and Cornell questionnaires were used to collect data. The data were about demographic charisteristics and experiencing pain or discomfort in musculoskeletal system that were obtained via the self-report.   Data analyzed by Chi-Square and Logistic Regression test using SPSS-22 software.

In total, 159 students with mean age of took part in the study. A significant difference was found between the neck, shoulder, upper back, lower back, forearm, and thigh pains with backpack carrying standards such as “way of carrying backpack”, “how to put the light and heavy stationery in the backpack”, and “backpack height “. the inappropriate carrying of backpack and improper placement of stationery in the backpack could cause shoulder and thigh pains was more than other MSDs respectively

This study indicates that there was a relationship between all of reviewed standards for using backpack with MSDs among school going adolescents. Thus, it is suggested to focus on increasing knowledge of adolescents and their parents to use the proper backpack.