Smoking and Chronic Back Pain

SUMMARY Introduction: Smoking represents the greatest avoidablerisk for a large number of serious diseases. The goal of thepresent study was to investigate the connection betweentobacco consumption and back pain,as such a link has yetto be clearly established.Methods:The analysis was based on the public use file ofthe German Telephone Health Survey 2003 (n = 8318),carried out by the Robert Koch Institute,Berlin. Afterexclusion of invalid cases,data on 7271 persons (totalmodel) and 1998 persons (smoker model) were analyzed.Results: Multivariate data analysis clearly shows that notonly daily smokers (OR 1.45,95% CI 1.13 to 1.85) but alsoformer smokers (OR 1.65,95% CI 1.32 to 2.07) have a significantly higher chance of suffering from chronicback pain than non-smokers. Number of smoking years isthe factor most significantly correlated with chronic backpain,while starting age and amount of tobacco consumedhave no impact.Discussion: Owing to the cross-sectional design of thisinvestigation it is not possible to conclude that smokingcauses increased back pain through physical dysfunction.Nevertheless,the correlation should be analyzed in a longitudinal study because clarification of causalityalways represents potential for prevention.Dtsch Arztebl Int 2008; 105(24):441–8DOI:10.3238/arztebl.2008.0441