Prevalence of Neck Pain Among Military Personnel

Abstract

Neck pain arises due to any inflammation, injury or postural changes. There is a huge number of military personal who experience neck pain due to their routine which includes wearing heavy bullet proof jackets, holding guns for long time and especially and most common their posture problems when they are performing duties on military posts .There is a a lot of researches done on prevalence of neck pain in different populations but on military there is less researches done. Objective: The objective was to determine the prevalence of
neck pain among military personnel.This cross sectional study was conducted in military soldiers and officers of Pak army of Lahore, Gujranwala and Sialkot. Sample size of 140 was calculated. Standardize neck disability index questionnaire were used for data collection. Prevalence of neck pain was measured by Neck Disability Index (NDI) and intensity was measured by Visual Analog Scale (VAS).The data was gathered and SPSS was used to analyzed the results. Results: Results showed that the 65% personnel were felt m i l d a n d m o d e r a t e n e c k p a i n 98.5 % respondents said that they lost their concentration due to neck pain in reading or other activities. 96.0% respondents reported neck pain due to lifting heavy weight. The
prevalence of mild and moderately neck pain in daily activity of personnel was 64.7% without any factors. Sleep disturbance due to pain also reported in 94.8% respondents It is concluded that neck pain intensity was varied according to factors, like in lifting heavy weight most of the personnel felt moderate pain and due to driving and reading felt mild pain.