Risk factors of mechanical neck pain among students

Abstract

pain for undergraduate students. Objectives: The objective of the study was to find out the risk factors of mechanical neck pain, socio-demographic information, association between neck pain and students, behavior, lifestyle, physical factors, educational factors, characteristics of neck pain and to perceive neck pain disability index. Methodology: The dissertation was an observational study with a case-control design. 200 participants responded to an online survey from 20th June 2021 to 20th September 2021. Inclusion criteria for the case group were having neck pain for at least 3 months and for the control group was not having neck pain for the last 5 years. The exclusion criteria for the case group was pathological neck pain. A structured questionnaire was used that had socio-demographic information, behavior and lifestyle, educational factors part. Neck disability index (NDI) and pain numeric rating scale (NPRS) were used to determine the factors. The statistical test has been conducted as per the distribution of data. Descriptive statistics were performed by the mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage. Interferential statistics has been performed by chisquare, Pearson’s correlation, independent t-test, and one-way ANOVA. Binary logistic regression has been performed using cases, presence of pain, and higher intensity of pain as a predictor variable. P-value was set as <.05. Results: Among 200 participants 100 were in the case group and 100 were in the control group. Mean± SD of overall age was 22.65± 2.049 and BMI. Among them prevalence of neck pain in male was (38%) and in female was (62%). Association found between neck pain with chair height, stress level, physical exercise, using laptop, duration of laptop using, phone using, television watching, video game playing, repetitive neck pain, prolong sitting, doing homework and bag weight. Risk factors were found with positive relation- chair height (OR4.846), using laptop (OR- 3.802), repetitive neck movement (OR- 3.313), television watching (OR- 2.948), video games playing (OR- 2.252), Phone using duration (OR1.822), bag weight (OR- 1.700) and with inverse relation physical exercise (OR- .736), posture during homework (OR- .325) and maintaining posture (OR- .276) were related to neck pain. Conclusion: Many factors were causing mechanical neck pain but among them using digital devices causes mechanical neck pain in most of them. Key words: Risk factor, mechanical neck pain, students.