Hand-Arm Vibration Assessment and Changes in the Thermal Map of the Skin in Tennis Athletes during the Service

Abstract

During recent years the number of tennis athletes has increased significantly. When playing tennis, the human body is exposed to many situations which can lead to human injuries, such as the so-called tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis). In this work a biomechanical analysis of tennis athletes, particularly during the service, was performed, considering three different types of over-grip and the presence of one anti-vibrator device. One part of the study evaluates the exposure to hand-arm vibration of the athlete, based on the European Directive 2002/44/EC concerning the minimum health and safety requirements, regarding the exposure of workers to risks from physical agents. The second part of the study considers an infrared thermography analysis in order to identify signs of risk of injury, particularly tennis elbow, one of the most common injuries in this sport. The results show that the presence of the anti-vibrator influences the vibration values greatly in the case of athletes with more experience and also for athletes with less performance. The presence of the Cork and/or Tourna on the racket grip does not have any significant effect on the hand-arm vibration (HAV), similarly in the case of athletes with the best performance and athletes with less technique. The results indicated that the infrared thermography technique may be used to identify the risk of injuries in tennis players.

Occupational Risk Evaluation through Infrared Thermography: Development and Proposal of a Rapid Screening Tool for Risk Assessment Arising from Repetitive Actions of the Upper Limbs

“…Other works also conducted temperature analysis of upper limbs, like shoulder, arm, and forearm, presenting a temperature increase in the ROIs examined after the performance of an effort or labor [10,14,16,20,47,57]. The reduction in hand skin temperature that was found in this study might be due to the low level of repetitive effort present in lower risk tasks, where fewer technical actions occur at lower movement frequencies, as shown in Tables 3 and 4, and mainly, for the vasoconstrictor response of the skin that occurs in response to physical exercises [53,65]. Skin temperature reduction during exercise has been found by other studies [66], but especially in office tasks whose repetitive stress level is not high (such as typing and mouse use), there have been reductions in the temperature of the hand skin, as in the Gold et al [14] study.…”

Myotendinous Thermoregulation in National Level Sprinters after a Unilateral Fatigue Acute Bout—A Descriptive Study

“…Because it is inexpensive, non-invasive, and free of contraindication tools [3,4], in order to clarify the thermoregulatory processes and the physiological and metabolic responses to exercise, different studies have been carried out in many disciplines using infrared thermography [5][6][7].…”

Myotendinous Thermoregulation in National Level Sprinters after a Unilateral Fatigue Acute Bout. A Descriptive Study

“…Since it has been observed that cutaneous infrared radiation changes may be evidence acute physiological responses, thermography has been the subject of numerous studies in sport medicine, due to the possibility of obtaining immediate data about the functional state of the studied structures is a great advantage over other techniques. [1][2][3] Because it is inexpensive, non-invasive and free of contraindications tool, [4,5] in order to clarify the thermoregulatory processes and the physiological and metabolic responses to exercise, different studies have been carried out in many disciplines using infrared thermography [6][7][8].…”