Vehicle vibration not the reason for disc damage: Study

TORONTO (Oct. 21, 2002) — A team of rehabilitation and back-pain experts has found that prolonged exposure to vehicle vibration is not the culprit associated with accelerated disc degeneration or severe changes to the vertebrae.

That does not mean however, as some published reports on the study have already suggested, that occupational driving has been excluded as the reason for high rates of general back pain reported by truck drivers.

Michele Battie, a professor at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine who led the team of researchers, said the study focused on tests with 45 pairs of identical Finnish twins, in which one twin drove for a living and the other did not. The researchers found there was not the slightest indication of discernible differences–specifically related to disc degeneration or vertebrae shifts in the back when exposed to long-term vibrations. But Battie says some recent reports mistakenly attributed the findings to all general back pain associated with driving.

“I want to be clear that this doesn’t mean people with driving jobs don’t experience more back pain.” Battie said, citing factors like sitting long periods in cramped quarters and in one position as possible reasons for high rates of back pain complaints by truck drivers. “I think anyone in constrained postures over time , with any joint or body part, will likely experience pain or discomfort. When I drive for long periods of time on road trips, by the end, my back is really happy to get out of the car.”

The conclusions, however, should be comforting to drivers she said. “I think it’s good news that drivers know their occupation doesn’t seem to be associated with long-term vertebrae or disc damage.”

Battie, who calls this recent study “the most well-controlled study to date on the effects of occupational driving in regard to disc-generation,” says the challenges for previous back studies was isolating the effects of driving with the habitual differences that may affect back pain between drivers and non-drivers. She says researchers in this case were better able to control those differences by using twins with vastly different occupational requirements (drivers and non-drivers), but with very similar physical and biological attributes.