Chronic low back pain is a common preventable occupational health illness affecting most workers. Large amount of financial and benefit cost had been spent by the developed countries to prevent, treat and rehabilitate a large number of workers who are exposed to hazards that are attributed to low back pain. Efforts on primary prevention of low back pain had been challenging due to difficulties in affirming work- relatedness of chronic back pain among workers. As such, efforts have to be focused on existing literatures to propose acceptable variables to develop the definition of work- relatedness specific to chronic low back pain. Such identified variables or factors could be used to develop a set of criteria in defining work- related chronic back pain. Literature search using specific work- related and chronic low back pain key words were used. Comparable articles were judged and a summarized result was obtained. These variables could be grouped into individual characteristics, health behaviours, physical conditions at work, work organizations and ergonomic factors. With proper methodology and statistical analysis, tools could be developed to aid physicians in determining work- related chronic low back pain among employees.

Chronic low back pain is a common and preventable complain amongworkers. Large amount of financial and benefit cost has been spent by the developed countries to prevent, treat and rehabilitate a large number of workers that are exposed to hazards attributing to low back pain. Efforts on primary prevention of low back pain has been challenging due to difficulties in affirming work-relatedness of chronic back pain among workers. As such, efforts have to be focused on the existing literatures to propose acceptable variables to define work-relatedness specific to occupational low back pain. Evidences suggest twisting, frequent manual lifting of objects, duration of daily exposure, coping mechanism towards the pain, body mass index (BMI), smoking status and physical activity are associated with occupational back pain. However, further research efforts are needed to establish stronger evidence and improve the occupational safety and health of our workers that are exposed to all these hazards throughout the day on a daily basis.

In the absence of objective definition of work- relatedness; decision- making processes, assessments, investigations, treatment and rehabilitation on chronic back pain due to work had been challenging. BACKS questionnaire was designed to assist physicians in determining occupational low back pain among employees from the aspect of reliability and validity. Each identified employee with history of chronic back pain was given chronic back pain was given the BACKS Tool prototype to be filled in. Data was analyzed via stepwise linear regression to develop a temporary model for the BACKS Tool questionnaire. A total 220 respondents were included in the study. Among the associated factors of chronic occupational back pain were physical demand, psychological demand, colleagues who complain of similar back pain, job task involved in twisting for more than 20o, age of the employees and Pain Score that was reported by the respective employees. The regression reported sensitivity of 90.9% and specificity of 95.5%. In search of determining work- relatedness among employees with occupational back pain versus those due to aging, a screening tool had to be developed to assist in providing scientific assessments that would improve employee satisfaction during educational promotion and counseling.

In a country that struggles on safety standards and relying heavily on manual labour, Malaysia over the decade had to be very objective in defining work- relatedness among musculoskeletal disorder cases especially chronic low back pain. The BACKS questionnaire was a proposed Back Apparatus; a Collaboration between National University of Malaysia Medical Centre (UKMMC) with Malaysian Social Security Organization (SOCSO) to assist in determining occupational chronic back pain. In the questionnaire, chronic back pain was defined as minimal cumulative back pain for more than 2 weeks in the past year, Pain Visual Analog Score above 2 cm and Oswestry Disability Index of above 20%. Based on the SOCSO registry from 2008 to 2010, 428 (56.3%) workers of 760 workers with back pain agreed and met the requirements of our study. According to the standards of the Medical Board, the BACKS Tool reported a sensitivity of 62.7%, specificity of 94.5%, positive- predictive value (PPV) of 92.9% and negative- predictive value (NPV) of 69.0% with moderate agreement as Kappa value was 0.56. The BACKS Tool served as a complementary assessment along with visits to the workplace that has its advantages when one would to conduct a self- administered assessment of their workplace by safety and health officers, organizations with limited funding.