Musculoskeletal health was studied as part of a comprehensive health examination in 131 professionally active dentists. 42% of dentists had experienced pain and disability (interference with daily activities) by neck-shoulder problems during the preceding year, with a tendency to greater prevalence in salaried dentists than in private practitioners. For the lower back, this percentage was 37. Somatic symptoms of stress, perceiving dentistry as physically too heavy or mentally too straining and a poorer general health status rating were all associated with a greater 1-yr prevalence of neck-shoulder and lower back pain and disability and with poorer general physical fitness. Age, weekly work hours, working posture, use of an assistant, or radiographic degenerative changes in the dentist's skeleton were not associated with 1-yr prevalence of neck-shoulder or lower back pain and disability. The results provide evidence that physical exercise should be recommended to dentists and might also be applicable to subjects in other occupations with similar requirements.

Arthrosis of the hand was studied in 136 dentists 33-69 yr of age on a joint-by-joint basis. A random sample of 940 persons of similar age from the general population served as controls. The prevalence of arthrosis was significantly higher in male than female dentists. Male dentists tended to have a higher and female dentists a similar prevalence of arthrosis as compared to the respective controls. The proportion of arthrotic distal interphalangeal (DIP) joints of all arthrotic joints of the hands was in both male and female dentists greater than that in controls, especially below the age 50, suggesting that arthrosis of the DIP joints of fingers develops earlier in dentists than in controls. This might result from the extensive use of the precision grip in dentistry. Arthrosis of the DIP joint of the index finger was not associated with the pinch power between the thumb and index finger, indicating good preservation of manual function in spite of increasing degenerative changes in hand joints with advancing age.

Pure tone audiograms from 68 dentists with a minimum of 10 yr in dental practice were taken in 1973 and a follow-up was carried out in 1988. The aim was to study whether the dental occupation carried a risk for hearing handicap or not. Allowance for age and sex was made by using the presbyacusis values of SPOOR as the reference. At the speech range of frequencies dentists did not differ from the reference. At higher frequencies of 4, 6, and 8 kHz dentists tended to have higher hearing thresholds than expected. At 6 kHz, both male and female dentists had highly significantly greater hearing thresholds than expected by the corresponding references in both the studies. This difference remained essentially similar over the follow-up period, indicating that dental drill noise was insufficient to cause continuous loss of hearing. While mild NIHL was very common and tended to appear earlier in male than in female dentists, there was in the long run no continuous loss of hearing in either sex other than that attributable to the natural development of presbyacusis.