Negative Economic Impact of Work Disability Because of Chronic Low Back Pain From the Patient Perspective: A French Cross-sectional Study of 195 Patients.

Objective: To investigate the economic effect of work disability because of chronic low back pain (cLBP) from the patient's perspective.

Design: We conducted a retrospective monocentric cross-sectional study from January 2010 to December 2019.

Setting: The study was conducted in a university hospital in a tertiary care setting.

Participants: The study included 195 patients (N=195) with cLBP and work disability who were referred for unit multidisciplinary rehabilitation using functional restoration from January 2010 to December 2019.

Interventions: All data were collected at a single point in time, immediately before beginning a functional restoration program. They were demographic, socio-professional, economic (change in income, a negative value indicated a loss of income at the time of work disability), and LBP-related data.

Main outcome measures: The main outcome measure was change in income because of work disability, related or unrelated to work injury and unemployment.

Results: We studied 195 workers (mean age, 42.6y; 47.7% women; duration of work disability because of cLBP, 11mo). We observed a median decrease in income of -14.3% (interquartile range [IQR], 29.9) in the study population. Loss of income appeared higher for unemployed patients (-29.82% IQR 15.6) and lower for those on sick leave related to work injury (-9.5% IQR 24). Two subgroups of patients were described according to the level of income loss: high-income loss and low-income loss, on the basis of the main outcome measure dichotomized using the median.

Conclusions: Work disability because of cLBP has a negative economic effect from the patient's perspective. Loss of income differs between different compensation categories. Further investigations remain necessary to identify factors associated with loss of income in larger samples of patients with cLBP.