Back Pain In Pilots

Back pain in pilots is a common occupational health problem that may interfere with flying performance. Back pain is a common complaint among military aviators of various aircraft. Utility helicopter pilots have more prevalent and more severe back pain than others pilots. It is hard to find a clear relationship between type of aircraft and the region of back pain (2-5). The high incidence of back pain in helicopter pilots (HP) has been attributed to vibration and the in-flight pilot's posture (6, 7). Fighter pilots frequently encounter neck and back pain and injuries due to high G (z) loading. Sitting posture can be hurting muscle strain, cervical vertebra and lumbar vertebra (9). back injury prevention is one of the seven major elements of

There are very few papers which have made an objective study.

-This retrospective study examines, Back pain was significantly more common among utility and attack helicopter pilots. Compared with only 64.02% of fighter pilots, 89.38% of utility and 74.55% of attack helicopter pilots reported some degree of back pain. In our Study 46.8% of Transport, 26.7% of fighters and 45.8% of helicopters expressed history of continued neck pains. Mid and low back pain at all degrees of severity were more common among helicopter pilots Utility helicopter pilots have more prevalent and more severe back pain than pilots of other platforms(2)

These examinations can exclude volunteers with background risk factors, but fly itself increase the risk of back pains. Lots of researches stated the high prevalence of back pain and injuries among fighters and discussed about their risk factors and then their preventive and intercepting treatment plans.

The prevalence of back pain in Australian military helicopter pilots is unacceptably high and may be limiting operational readiness, pilot performance, flying safety, and pilot health. Urgent attention needs to be given to improved ergonomic design in aircraft, and both back pain prevention and back injury rehabilitation programs

We reached to a significant relationship between back pain and neck pain. Also, our results show that significant relationship between physical exercise duration and back. Physical exercises can be helpful for reducing the prevalence of back pains and must be considered in treatment plan for this problem. Our research showed pilots with more physical exercises had lesser back pains. It confirms previous studies' results, suggested physical training as a preventive method.

Another’s study shows that LBP had more pain during flight in Helicopter pilots respect to others groups (12, 19).

Based on radiographic reports in our research, it is worthy of mention that near 56 (42.3%) individuals out of 130 (missing=3) suffered of positional back pain, back pain due to extension posture was more common than flexion posture.

-There are authors that have related the flight duration the with the appearance of the back pain (20-22) even Shanahan et al. (23)carried out a study in which they considered that the lumbar pain in the helicopter pilot appeared, on the average, in 88 minutes of flight.

-There are authors like Sliosberg (21) considers that the chronic back pain appears on the average in pilots with chronic back pain appears on the average in pilots with300 flight hours or Colleau starting from more than 500. Furthermore, significant relationship was found between the flight hours and the back pain