Individual, physical and psychological risk factors for neck pain in Australian office workers: a 1-year longitudinal study

Abstract

Neck pain is more prevalent in office workers than in the general community. To date, findings from prospective studies that investigated causal relationships between putative risk factors and the onset of neck pain in this population have been limited by high loss to follow-up. The aim of this research was to prospectively evaluate a range of risk factors for neck pain in office workers, using validated and reliable objective measures as well as attain an estimate of 1-year incidence. We assembled a cohort of 53 office workers without neck pain and measured individual, physical, workplace and psychological factors at baseline. We followed participants for 1 year to measure the incidence of neck pain. We achieved 100% participant follow-up. Cox regression analysis was applied to examine the relationship between the putative risk factors and the cumulative incidence of neck pain. The 1-year incidence proportion of neck pain in Australian office workers was estimated in this study to be 0.49 (95% CI 0.36-0.62). Predictors of neck pain with moderate to large effect sizes were female gender (HR: 3.07; 95% CI: 1.18-7.99) and high psychological stress (HR: 1.64; 95% CI: 0.66-4.07). Protective factors included increased mobility of the cervical spine (HR: 0.44; 95% CI: 0.19-1.05) and frequent exercise (HR: 0.64; 95% CI: 0.27-1.51). These results reveal that neck pain is common in Australian office workers and that there are risk factors that are potentially modifiable.

Psychosocial and Ergonomics Risk Factors Related to Neck, Shoulder and Back Complaints among Malaysia Office Workers

“…Workers might need to finish their work deadline and facing with heavy job demands. Our finding is in consistent with study conducted Sweden [9], [27], Brazil [28], Germany [4], Finland [11], Australia [29] and US [30].…”

“…This can be supported by the findings from the prospective longitudinal studies ranging from three months to 5.4 years, the risk of disorders increases among those who have high work strain, intensive mouse and keyboard use, perceived high muscle tension and previous neck and shoulder symptoms [5], [7], [15], [29], [35]- [37] in a long run.…”

Associations between neck musculoskeletal complaints and work related factors among public service computer workers in Kaunas

“…mental fatigue, lack of staff and being tired after a break -in creased the probability of neck complaints [7], Ranas inghe et al defined the aforementioned aspect as work overload, and also identified it as significant with respect MSDs, regard it as the risk factor. Some of them even con firm the associations between MSDs in the neck area and work related stress [11,27,31]. This assessment once more confirms the fact that MSDs have a multifactorial etiology.…”

“…The results have shown that the raised RULA risk score in the neck area significantly increased the probability of complaints in this area. We did not manage to find any studies that have assessed ergonomic risk by the use of the aforementioned method, however, epidemiological studies confirm, that improper working posture [9] as well as throwing back of the neck [27] increased the risk of such complaints. Often both, psychosocial and other work environment re lated risks, were comprehensively assessed by an increased stress at work.…”

“…However, other researchers that had studied the relationship between this aspect and the complaints, did not establish any significant associations [9,25]. Many cross sectional [7,9,25] as well as follow up epide miologic [24,26,27] studies acknowledge the relationship between the gender and MSDs of neck. According to their data, women are more vulnerable with regard to these complaints and they have 1.8 to 3.07 times higher prob ability of experiencing MSDs in the neck in comparison with men.…”