Cost of low back pain in Switzerland in 2005

✍ Scribed by Simon Wieser; Bruno Horisberger; Sara Schmidhauser; Claudia Eisenring; Urs Brügger; Andreas Ruckstuhl; Jürg Dietrich; Anne F. Mannion; Achim Elfering; Özgür Tamcan; Urs Müller

• Book ID: 106295233
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 541 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1618-7598
• DOI: 10.1007/s10198-010-0258-y

✦ Synopsis

Low back pain (LBP) is the most prevalent health problem in Switzerland and a leading cause of reduced work performance and disability. This study estimated the total cost of LBP in Switzerland in 2005 from a societal perspective using a bottom-up prevalence-based cost-of-illness approach. The study considers more cost categories than are typically investigated and includes the costs associated with a multitude of LBP sufferers who are not under medical care. The findings are based on a questionnaire completed by a sample of 2,507 German-speaking respondents, of whom 1,253 suffered from LBP in the last 4 weeks; 346 of them were receiving medical treatment for their LBP. Direct costs of LBP were estimated at €2.6 billion and direct medical costs at 6.1% of the total healthcare expenditure in Switzerland. Productivity losses were estimated at €4.1 billion with the human capital approach and €2.2 billion with the friction cost approach. Presenteeism was the single most prominent cost category. The total economic burden of LBP to Swiss society was between 1.6 and 2.3% of GDP.