Factors associated with headache and neck pain among telecommuters – a five days follow-up

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Abstract

Background

The current sanitary crisis brought on by the COVID-19 recently forced a large proportion of workers to adopt telecommuting with limited time to plan transition. Given that several work-related risk factors are associated with headache and neck pain, it seems important to determine those associated with headache and neck pain in telecommuters.

The main objective of this study was to identify which telecommuting and individual associated factors are related with headache and neck pain occurrence in telecommuters over a five days follow-up. The second objective was to evaluate the impact of wearing a headset on headache and neck pain intensity in telecommuters.

Methods

One hundred and sixty-two participants in telecommuting situation were recruited. Baseline assessment included sociodemographic data, headache and neck pain-related disability (6-item Headache Impact Test (HIT-6) and Neck Bournemouth Questionnaire (NBQ)), headache and neck pain frequency and intensity as well as questions about the wearing of a headset (headset wearing, headset type and headset wearing hours). A prospective data collection of headache, neck pain and headset wearing was conducted using daily e-mail over a 5-day follow-up. A stepwise multivariate regression model was performed to determine associated factors of headache or neck pain occurrence during the follow-up. A t-test was conducted to assess the impact of headset wearing on headache and neck pain intensity during the follow-up.

Results

Regarding headache, the stepwise multivariate regression model showed that the HIT-6 score was associated with future headache occurrence in telecommuters (OR (95% CI) = 1.094 (1.042–1.148); R ² = 0.094; p < 0.001). For neck pain, the stepwise multivariate regression showed that the NBQ score was related to future neck pain occurrence in telecommuters (OR (95% CI) = 1.182 (1.102–1.269); R ² = 0.182; p < 0.001). T-test showed no difference between participants that wore a headset and participant that did not wore a headset on mean headache ( p = 0.94) and neck pain ( p = 0.56) intensity during the five days follow-up.

Conclusion

Although several work-related risk factors are associated with headache and neck pain in workers, telecommuting did not present the same risks. Working set-up did not have a significant impact on headache and neck pain as headache-related disability was the only associated factor of future headache episodes and neck-pain related disability was the only associated factor of future neck pain episodes. Also, wearing a headset had no impact on headache and neck pain in telecommuters.

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Most cited references 23

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Global, regional, and national burden of migraine and tension-type headache, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Lars Jacob Stovner, Emma Nichols, Timothy Steiner … (2019)

Summary Background Through the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) studies, headache has emerged as a major global public health concern. We aimed to use data from the GBD 2016 study to provide new estimates for prevalence and years of life lived with disability (YLDs) for migraine and tension-type headache and to present the methods and results in an accessible way for clinicians and researchers of headache disorders. Methods Data were derived from population-based cross-sectional surveys on migraine and tension-type headache. Prevalence for each sex and 5-year age group interval (ie, age 5 years to ≥95 years) at different time points from 1990 and 2016 in all countries and GBD regions were estimated using a Bayesian meta-regression model. Disease burden measured in YLDs was calculated from prevalence and average time spent with headache multiplied by disability weights (a measure of the relative severity of the disabling consequence of a disease). The burden stemming from medication overuse headache, which was included in earlier iterations of GBD as a separate cause, was subsumed as a sequela of either migraine or tension-type headache. Because no deaths were assigned to headaches as the underlying cause, YLDs equate to disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs). We also analysed results on the basis of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a compound measure of income per capita, education, and fertility. Findings Almost three billion individuals were estimated to have a migraine or tension-type headache in 2016: 1·89 billion (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 1·71–2·10) with tension-type headache and 1·04 billion (95% UI 1·00–1·09) with migraine. However, because migraine had a much higher disability weight than tension-type headache, migraine caused 45·1 million (95% UI 29·0–62·8) and tension-type headache only 7·2 million (95% UI 4·6–10·5) YLDs globally in 2016. The headaches were most burdensome in women between ages 15 and 49 years, with migraine causing 20·3 million (95% UI 12·9–28·5) and tension-type headache 2·9 million (95% UI 1·8–4·2) YLDs in 2016, which was 11·2% of all YLDs in this age group and sex. Age-standardised DALYs for each headache type showed a small increase as SDI increased. Interpretation Although current estimates are based on limited data, our study shows that headache disorders, and migraine in particular, are important causes of disability worldwide, and deserve greater attention in health policy debates and research resource allocation. Future iterations of this study, based on sources from additional countries and with less methodological heterogeneity, should help to provide stronger evidence of the need for action. Funding Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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How Effective Is Telecommuting? Assessing the Status of Our Scientific Findings.

Kristen M. Shockley, Tammy Allen, Timothy D Golden (2015)

Telecommuting has become an increasingly popular work mode that has generated significant interest from scholars and practitioners alike. With recent advances in technology that enable mobile connections at ever-affordable rates, working away from the office as a telecommuter has become increasingly available to many workers around the world. Since the term telecommuting was first coined in the 1970s, scholars and practitioners have debated the merits of working away from the office, as it represents a fundamental shift in how organizations have historically done business. Complicating efforts to truly understand the implications of telecommuting have been the widely varying definitions and conceptualizations of telecommuting and the diverse fields in which research has taken place.Our objective in this article is to review existing research on telecommuting in an effort to better understand what we as a scientific community know about telecommuting and its implications. In so doing, we aim to bring to the surface some of the intricacies associated with telecommuting research so that we may shed insights into the debate regarding telecommuting's benefits and drawbacks. We attempt to sift through the divergent and at times conflicting literature to develop an overall sense of the status of our scientific findings, in an effort to identify not only what we know and what we think we know about telecommuting, but also what we must yet learn to fully understand this increasingly important work mode.After a brief review of the history of telecommuting and its prevalence, we begin by discussing the definitional challenges inherent within existing literature and offer a comprehensive definition of telecommuting rooted in existing research. Our review starts by highlighting the need to interpret existing findings with an understanding of how the extent of telecommuting practiced by participants in a study is likely to alter conclusions that may be drawn. We then review telecommuting's implications for employees' work-family issues, attitudes, and work outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment and identification, stress, performance, wages, withdrawal behaviors, and firm-level metrics. Our article continues by discussing research findings concerning salient contextual issues that might influence or alter the impact of telecommuting, including the nature of the work performed while telecommuting, interpersonal processes such as knowledge sharing and innovation, and additional considerations that include motives for telecommuting such as family responsibilities. We also cover organizational culture and support that may shape the telecommuting experience, after which we discuss the community and societal effects of telecommuting, including its effects on traffic and emissions, business continuity, and work opportunities, as well as the potential impact on societal ties. Selected examples of telecommuting legislation and policies are also provided in an effort to inform readers regarding the status of the national debate and its legislative implications. Our synthesis concludes by offering recommendations for telecommuting research and practice that aim to improve the quality of data on telecommuting as well as identify areas of research in need of development.

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A six-item short-form survey for measuring headache impact: the HIT-6.

M Kosinski, M S Bayliss, J. Bjorner … (2003)

Migraine and other severe headaches can cause suffering and reduce functioning and productivity. Patients are the best source of information about such impact. To develop a new short form (HIT-6) for assessing the impact of headaches that has broad content coverage but is brief as well as reliable and valid enough to use in screening and monitoring patients in clinical research and practice. HIT-6 items were selected from an existing item pool of 54 items and from 35 items suggested by clinicians. Items were selected and modified based on content validity, item response theory (IRT) information functions, item internal consistency, distributions of scores, clinical validity, and linguistic analyses. The HIT-6 was evaluated in an Internet-based survey of headache sufferers (n = 1103) who were members of America Online (AOL). After 14 days, 540 participated in a follow-up survey. HIT-6 covers six content categories represented in widely used surveys of headache impact. Internal consistency, alternate forms, and test-retest reliability estimates of HIT-6 were 0.89, 0.90, and 0.80, respectively. Individual patient score confidence intervals (95%) of app. +/-5 were observed for 88% of all respondents. In tests of validity in discriminating across diagnostic and headache severity groups, relative validity (RV) coefficients of 0.82 and 1.00 were observed for HIT-6, in comparison with the Total Score. Patient-level classifications based in HIT-6 were accurate 88.7% of the time at the recommended cut-off score for a probability of migraine diagnosis. HIT-6 was responsive to self-reported changes in headache impact. The IRT model estimated for a 'pool' of items from widely used measures of headache impact was useful in constructing an efficient, reliable, and valid 'static' short form (HIT-6) for use in screening and monitoring patient outcomes.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Mariève Houle: Marieve.Houle@uqtr.ca

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Public Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Public Health

Title: BMC Public Health

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2458

Publication date (Electronic): 6 June 2021

Publication date PMC-release: 6 June 2021

Publication date Collection: 2021

Volume: 21

Electronic Location Identifier: 1086

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.265703.5, ISNI 0000 0001 2197 8284, Department of Anatomy, , Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, ; 3351, boul. des Forges, C.P. 500, Trois-Rivières, QC G8Z 4M3 Canada

[2 ]GRID grid.265703.5, ISNI 0000 0001 2197 8284, Department of Human Kinetics, , Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, ; 3351, boul. des Forges, C.P. 500, Trois-Rivières, QC G8Z 4M3 Canada

[3 ]Institut Franco-Européen de Chiropraxie, 24, Blvd Paul Vaillant-Couturier, 94200, Ivry sur Seine, France

[4 ]GRID grid.265703.5, ISNI 0000 0001 2197 8284, Department of Chiropractic, , Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, ; 3351, boul. des Forges, C.P. 500, Trois-Rivières, QC G8Z 4M3 Canada

Article

Publisher ID: 11144

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-021-11144-6

PMC ID: 8179834

PubMed ID: 34090415

SO-VID: ced0d3f7-8341-4f34-a317-6f4c1d362f01

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 12 March 2021

Date accepted : 24 May 2021

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: telecommuting,physical health,disability,headset,headache,neck pain,covid-19

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: telecommuting, physical health, disability, headset, headache, neck pain, covid-19

Factors associated with headache and neck pain among telecommuters – a five days follow-up

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Novel Coronavirus Disease COVID-19

Most cited references 23

Global, regional, and national burden of migraine and tension-type headache, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

How Effective Is Telecommuting? Assessing the Status of Our Scientific Findings.

A six-item short-form survey for measuring headache impact: the HIT-6.

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