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For children and teenagers, various factors can be considered as the cause of their back pain, especially since these ages are more active everyday. Back pain for adolescence and children may increase with age which typically affects girls more than boys. For several rare cases, back pain can have an underlying serious condition that is needing immediate care and solution from the healthcare professionals. If your child is experiencing severe back pain that he has been complaining about for a long time now, this might be a sign that you need to see a doctor for a check-up. Symptoms like these should never be neglected.
In this article, we will be talking about back pain in children and in teens. This will provide you with various comprehensive information including the cause of back pain, diagnostic considerations, and treatments that are available to cure your child’s pain which could help you as a parent understand and support kids with the condition.
Obesity, sedentary lifestyle, participation in sports and any various physical activity, family history of lower back pain, poor posture, psychological stress, and smoking could be some of the most common risk factors for back pain in adolescence. If a child has a family history of back pain, they are more likely to have back pain, too, compared to a child with no family history of the condition at all.
Relatedly, studies have suggested that people who experience back pain in their early childhood are more at risk of having back pain in their adulthood. Furthermore, school-age children who complain of having back pain usually have high levels of psychosocial difficulties such as having problems with their daily actions/activities and behavior, and emotional distress.
Back pain could only be localized and restricted in one area of the back or could affect the whole back depending on the cause of it. The common causes of back pain generally have the following characteristics:
When this happens, a child could usually have difficulties in focusing, and catching up with school activities which could lead to school absences and hesitancy in performing extra curricular activities in school.
Depending on the underlying cause of back pain, the following are the possible types of back pain that a child is experiencing:
Some evidence has suggested that heavy backpacks could cause, and is one of the main causes of back pain in children and adolescents because of the following reasons:
The American Academy of Pediatrics have suggested in their non-evidence based guidelines that the optimal weight of a child’s backpack should only be at least, and restricted to 10-20 percent of a child’s body weight to prevent body/back pain among children. Relatedly, they have suggested that if a child is complaining of back pain because of their backpacks, the weight should be reduced immediately. However, if the kid really has a lot to bring with her to school, it is recommended to give them a wheeled bag instead.
Having back pain is not something uncommon, especially when individuals undergo the mentioned risk factors on the daily or they barely do. Of course, despite it happening to a lot of people of all ages, even in kids, it does not mean that back pains should be ignored. Quite frankly, 80% of the people in the US and 7.5% of the world’s population have been reported to experience back pains as reasons to miss work or visit their attending physicians.
That said, it is more than common, but it could also be avoided through the following tips that could be applied to people in different age ranges as long as caution is also observed.
Back pain in kids, especially on children under 10 years of age, especially those kids that are 4 years younger should be considered a red flag since these may be a symptom of a serious condition like spinal tumors, infectious diseases, vertebral fractures, and cauda equina syndrome. Connectedly, spinal tumors and fractures could have more symptoms like stiffness in the spine during the morning and while walking, fatigue, loss of appetite, weight loss, tenderness on the spine, night pain, and fever. On the other hand, back pain associated with cauda equina may cause bladder and/or bowel incontinence and progressive neurological sciatica-like symptoms.
Any complaint by a child or a teenager of back pain should be taken seriously especially if you suspect them having some serious medical problems. Booking an appointment with your physicians (pediatricians) for a medical consultation and examination is advisable and it should be done during the early stage of back pain especially if it is persistent, progressive, and severe. However, if the pain is only due to physical activities, self-care and over the counter medication could help.
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