Survey of Prevalence and Risk Factors Associated with Upper Extremity Musculoskeletal Disorders by Repetitive Job Activities Methods in Baker of Iran

Morteza Mortazavi Mehrizi¹, Mehrzad Ebrahemzadih^2,3*, Abdolhamid Tajvar^4*, Omid Giahi^2,3

¹Department of Occupational Health, School of Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran.
²Kurdistan Environmental Health Research Center, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran.
³Department of Occupational Health, Faculty of Health, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, Iran.
⁴Research Center for Social Determinants of Health Promotion, School of Health, Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences (HUMS), Bandar Abbas, Iran.

DOI: 10.4236/health.2014.621341                

Abstract

Aim: The first purpose is to survey the cumulative trauma disorder (CTD) prevalence in 4 zones of neck, shoulder, hand/wrist and back, and the second purpose is to survey the risk factors producing upper limb musculoskeletal disorders by using OCRA index method. In this analytic-descriptive and cross-sectional study, incorporation of four data collection methods was contained; observing and interviewing methods, using questionnaire and check list, were utilized. Randomly, 384 samples for CTD prevalence and 423 samples for OCRA index exposure survey were collected by cluster ratio sampling. In this study, findings indicated that CTD prevalence was high in studied bakery workers and most disorder and pain were reported in back, knees and hand/wrist. Through different tasks, most percentage of neck CTD (7.1%) and shoulder CTD (27.8%) was related to selling and baker tasks respectively, and most percentage of hand/wrist CTD (33/3%) and back CTD (38.1%) was related to bread baker task. There was a significant correlation between shoulder, hand/wrist and back CTD with bakery and task type, and effect of job background on CTD preva-lence was improved in the above four zones. The rather high prevalence of CTD in the young pop-ulation with average age of 30 years which have a few work experiences and the results of per-formed risk assessment can be taken account of serious warning, if it is not considered.

Keywords

OCRA Index, Musculoskeletal Disorders, Cumulative Trauma Disorder (CTD), Nordic Questionnaire

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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