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01-04-2008 | Original Article

Patterns of sick-leave and health outcomes in injured workers with back pain

Authors: Pierre Côté, Marjorie L. Baldwin, William G. Johnson, John W. Frank, Richard J. Butler

Published in: European Spine Journal | Issue 4/2008

Abstract

Little is known about the sick-leave experiences of workers who make a workers’ compensation claim for back pain. Our objective is to describe the 1-year patterns of sick-leave and the health outcomes of a cohort of workers who make a workers’ compensation claim for back pain. We studied a cohort of 1,831 workers from five large US firms who made incident workers’ compensation claims for back pain between January 1, 1999 and June 30, 2002. Injured workers were interviewed 1 month (n = 1,321), 6 months (n = 810) and 1 year (n = 462) following the onset of their pain. We described the course of back pain using four patterns of sick-leave: (1) no sick-leave, (2) returned to worked and stayed, (3) multiple episodes of sick-leave and (4) not yet returned to work. We described the health outcomes as back and/or leg pain intensity, functional limitations and health-related quality of life. We analyzed data from participants who completed all follow-up interviews (n = 457) to compute the probabilities of transition between patterns of sick-leave. A significant proportion of workers experienced multiple episodes of sick-leave (30.2%; 95% CI 25.0–35.1) during the 1-year follow-up. The proportion of workers who did not report sick-leave declined from 42.4% (95% CI 39.0–46.1) at 1 month to 33.6% (28.0–38.7) at 1 year. One year after the injury, 2.9% (1.6–4.9) of workers had not yet returned to work. Workers who did not report sick-leave and those who returned and stayed at work reported better health outcomes than workers who experienced multiple episodes of sick-leave or workers who had not returned to work. Almost a third of workers with an incident episode of back pain experience recurrent spells of work absenteeism during the following year. Our data suggest that stable patterns of sick-leave are associated with better health.

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Title: Patterns of sick-leave and health outcomes in injured workers with back pain
Authors: Pierre Côté
Marjorie L. Baldwin
William G. Johnson
John W. Frank
Richard J. Butler
Publication date: 01-04-2008
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Published in: European Spine Journal / Issue 4/2008
Print ISSN: 0940-6719
Electronic ISSN: 1432-0932
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-007-0577-6

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