Diagnosis of Whole-Body Vibration Related Health Problems in Occupational Medicine

Abstract

Occupational whole-body vibration (WBV) exposed workers may report nonspecific health complaints or debilitating physical disorders. Health care providers and safety professionals may not recognize such occupational injuries and be unfamiliar with appropriate exposure assessment. Method: Review of peer-reviewed clinical studies and publications, medical evidence, differential diagnostic evaluation protocols, surveillance programs, national and international standards, and intervention recommendations regarding WBV. Results: There are well-designed epidemiological studies showing that prolonged and increasing exposures to WBV can primarily result in musculoskeletal or neurological disorders of the spine. Less frequent and weaker evidence exist for organ damage that include intestinal organs, vascular system and other body parts. In some countries spinal injury caused by longterm occupational WBV exposure is compensable. Many physicians and occupational safety experts seem to be unfamiliar with the wide spectrum of health complaints and the proper evaluation of WBV-exposed patients following expert reviews and international guidelines/standards. Detailed protective regulations and provisions exist primarily in highly industrialized countries with good occupational health systems. The causal diagnosis should be based on medical findings, a differential diagnostic methodology and adequate work exposure assessment and documentation of WBV. Conclusion: A proper WBV-related injury diagnosis includes a critical review of the work history, exposure data assessment and the clinical differential diagnostic evaluation. Many health care providers receive little or no training in the recognition of WBV-related injuries and case management. WBV health surveillance should assess the health status of WBV-exposed workers and address preventive measures for employers and employees.

Whole-body vibration and occupational physical performance: a review

“…Although it is recognised there is potentially a relationship between performance decrements and injury risk, the notion of injury is not discussed herein. Such relationships are discussed comprehensively in other reviews (Bovenzi 2006;Johanning 2011;Kittasumy and Buchholz 2004).…”

“…Where physical responses are considered, such as hand-eye coordination, muscle reflex and heart response, much has been written on the acute responses to human function during and following WBV (Mani et al 2010;McLeod and Griffin 1989;Shoenberger 1972). Frequently, it has been recognised that vibration in the workplace, particularly workplaces that require vehicle transit, is sufficient to induce a physical response in humans (Johanning 2011;Kittasumy and Buchholz 2004;Milosavljevic et al 2011). In some cases, alteration to human function may have negative implications for physical performance in job tasks.…”

A Review of Low-Frequency Active Vibration Control of Seat Suspension Systems

“…In [5], it was shown that if the exposure to low-frequency vibrations produced by commercial vehicles were more than 8 hours every day, conventional vehicle seating with passive suspension could not protect the driver's body from the effects of WBVs. According to a medical research report by Johanning (2011) [6], low-frequency vibrations may cause resonances of human organs and tissues. There, it was claimed that back pain disease is one of the most common occupational injuries because the lower back of the human body is sensitive to low-frequency vibrations of 4-10 Hz.…”

“…2019, 9, In terms of seat vibration isolation measurements, Mozaffarin et al (2008) [10] designed an active dummy technique (Figure 2), which adopted lateral and longitudinal actuators to produce forces in the vertical and lateral directions, respectively, to simulate the dynamic response of three different human body masses by reproducing the equivalent dynamic mass. [6].…”

Optimizing seat selection for LHDs in the underground mining environment

“…WBV is associated with an increased risk of low back pain (LBP) when operators are exposed to vibrations while in a sitting posture (Johanning, 2011;Lis et al, 2007). More than 25% of employees are affected by LBP each year (Lee et al, 2001).…”