مطالب

Background : Chronic non-specific low back pain is extremely common in the general population. Athletes are often at special risk for more serious  associated factors of low back pain, which are often sport-specific in their etiology. Aim: The purpose of this study was to investigate the epidemiology and  associated factors of chronic non-specific low back pain in male athletes of track and field in the national league.     Materials and Methods : A total of 63 individuals were randomly selected to enter the study. The mean age of the subjects with the standard deviation was 25.2±4.5. To investigate the disability due to chronic non-specific low back pain, Oswestry questionnaire was used. For the evaluation of the pain perception, the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) was employed. Statistical analysis was performed using chi-square (χ²), spearman correlation and multiple linear regression at a significance level of 0.05. All statistical calculations were done using SPSS-21 software.  Results: Out of 63 subjects, 32 individuals (50.8%) had chronic non-specific low back pain. Of these, 29 subjects(46%)  had low disability and 3 subjects (4.8%) had moderate disability due to low back pain. None of the participants had  severeor very  severedisability. Pain perception measured using the VAS, had a mean of 35.4%. The most frequent cause of Chronic non-specific low back pain in track and field athletes was high-intensity training (26.7%, n=24), followed by training and activity location (21.1%, n=19) (x 2 = 64.88, p=0.000). The regression analysis showed a significant relationship between high-intensity training and Chronic non-specific low back pain among the mentioned athletes (p≤0.05). Conclusion: The results of this study shows a high epidemiology of Chronic non-specific low back pain in male track and field athletes, which requires serious attention. Additionally, high-intensity training and the location of training and activities were identified as key  associated factors in Chronic non-specific low back pain.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of lateral dominance (ipsilateral vs. contralateral) and gender on fine motor skill performance in adolescents. Conducted during the 2021-2022 academic year in Shiraz, the experimental study involved 383 adolescents aged 16 to 18, selected due to COVID-19 conditions. The Edinburgh Handedness Questionnaire assessed hand dominance, the Hole-in-the-Card test identified the dominant eye, and the Grooved Pegboard test evaluated fine motor skills. Results from the analysis of variance revealed that in the ipsilateral group (dominant eye = dominant hand), there was no significant gender difference (p > 0.05). Conversely, in the contralateral group (dominant eye ≠ dominant hand), females outperformed males across all variables (p < 0.05), with significant differences noted in right-hand time (p = 0.001), left-hand time (p = 0.028), and overall score (p = 0.003). In conclusion, gender and lateral dominance significantly influence fine motor skill performance, suggesting that educational and training programs for adolescents should consider these factors to enhance motor skills effectively.