OBJECTIVES: Postural disorders and Low-back pain (LBP) have become incredibly common amongst adolescents partially due to their sedentary lifestyle and partly because of their ill-adapted physical activity (PA). We aimed to measure the back care and spine disease prevention knowledge of adolescents in comparison with the results of children taking part in a back school program and in correlation with their PA.

METHODS: 253 high-school students between the ages of 14-17 years (14.84±0.75) were selected into the cross-sectional study in Hungary, city of Pécs. Spine disease prevention knowledge was assessed with the questionnaire developed by Monfort et al. Furthermore, a subgroup of 22 individuals took part in a 45 minute long back school program, whose results were compared with the results of the main group. Independent T-test and chi-square test were used to analyse the data with the SPSS v.28.0 software. P-values lower than 0.05 were considered significant.

RESULTS: In the surveyed population the average spine prevention knowledge was measured as 59.26%, whereas the children’s average knowledge participating in the back school program was 89.58%. Additionally, the knowledge of children participating in the back school program is significantly better (p<0.001). The results display no significant difference (p=0.165) in the spine prevention knowledge between adolescent athletes (29.64%) and non-athletes (70.36%). Additionally, no significant difference was measured between adolescent athletes (29.64%) and non-athletes (70.36%) in any of the seven knowledge category assessed in the questionnaire (p>0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: The knowledge of children participating in the back school program is better than the general knowledge assessed in the young population, although the latter is slightly better than we previously expected it to be. In conclusion, the knowledge of the assessed population is still insufficient to prevent spine diseases manifesting in the adulthood.