Injury Prevention

You Can Prevent Back Injuries; Here's How

Low back pain is a menacing, expensive and inevitable problem. Now for the good news, and believe it or not, there is some: Although nearly all workers will experience substantial back pain during their working lives, it need not result in a full-fledged, disabling injury. In fact, some back pain and many injuries can be prevented through a combination of job redesign, worker training, physical fitness and other measures.

"Mild low back pain is a normal fact of life, which makes it a huge frustration for the workers' comp system," said Daniel Brustein, MD, medical director for University Hospitals CompCare. "This is no time to give up, however. Frequent, costly back injuries are not a foregone conclusion."

Back injuries are often described as insidious: They infiltrate a workplace in mysterious ways and sometimes subside in an equally subtle manner. Even experts cannot agree on what causes them, what prevents them or how to treat them. They have been linked to everything from frequent lifting and bending to genetics, personal risk factors such as smoking, and psychosocial issues such as how well a worker gets along with his supervisor.

Dr. Brustein believes all of these factors come into play in some cases, but he urges employers to focus on designing jobs and tasks to match worker capabilities (ergonomics). "Poor postures, where people are leaning over an assembly line to reach a part or bending down to pick up a box, are my biggest concern," he said. "Better workstation design, material handling equipment and smaller loads can all be built into the job."

In addition to posture, most back injury experts believe that the force required to do the work (which includes the weight of a lift) and the frequency of the task (or repetitions) are the key risk factors. There is little agreement on what is the best posture, how much weight is too much or how many repetitions are too many, however.