Prevalence and incidence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in secondary industries of 21st century Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Govaerts, Renée; Tassignon, Bruno; Ghillebert, Jo; Serrien, Ben; Bock, Sander De; Ampe, Toon; Makrini, Ilias El; Vanderborght, Bram; Meeusen, Romain

doi:10.1186/s12891-021-04615-9

Cited by 106 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Despite increasing attention for these risk factors, repetitive movements are still reported in 61% of the European working population [3]. Fiftyone percent of the workers within this population suffered from shoulder disorders in the past year [4]. A more specific risk factor for these upper extremity WMSDs is overhead work, which places complex and concurrent stresses on tissues of the upper extremities [5].…”

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confidence: 99%

An Occupational Shoulder Exoskeleton Reduces Muscle Activity and Fatigue During Overhead Work

Bock

Rossini

Lefeber

et al. 2022

IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng.

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Objective. This paper assesses the effect of a passive shoulder exoskeleton prototype, Exo4Work, on muscle activity, muscle fatigue and subjective experience during simulated occupational overhead and non-overhead work. Methods. Twenty-two healthy males performed six simulated industrial tasks with and without Exo4Work exoskeleton in a randomized counterbalanced cross-over design. During these tasks electromyography, heart rate, metabolic cost, subjective parameters and performance parameters were acquired. The effect of the exoskeleton and the body side on these parameters was investigated. Results. Anterior deltoid activity and fatigue reduced up to 16% and 41%, respectively, during isometric overhead work, and minimized hindrance of the device during nonoverhead tasks. Wearing the exoskeleton increased feelings of frustration and increased discomfort in the areas where the exoskeleton and the body interfaced. The assistive effect of the exoskeleton was less prominent during dynamic tasks. Conclusion. This exoskeleton may reduce muscle activity and delay development of muscle fatigue in an overhead working scenario. For dynamic applications, the exoskeleton's assistive profile, which mimics the gravitational torque of the arm, is potentially sub-optimal. Significance. This evaluation paper is the first to report reduced muscle fatigue and activity when working with an occupational shoulder exoskeleton providing one third of the gravitational torque of the arm during overhead work. These results stress the potential of occupational shoulder exoskeletons in overhead working situations and may direct towards longitudinal field experiments. Additionally, this experiment may stimulate future work to further investigate the effect of different assistive profiles.

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confidence: 99%

An Occupational Shoulder Exoskeleton Reduces Muscle Activity and Fatigue During Overhead Work

Bock

Rossini

Lefeber

et al. 2022

IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng.

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“…Repetitive manual work, forceful exertions, prolonged nonneutral postures of the wrist, intensive wrist movements, and hand-arm vibration are identified as critical risk factors for hand/wrist WMSDs, which are common in service industries, manufacturing industries, office work, as well as the healthcare sector [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. From a meta-analysis on the prevalence of WMSDs in Europe's secondary industries during the 21st century, wrist WMSD is among the most common WMSDs with a twelve-month prevalence of 42% [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of a New Simplified Inertial Sensor Method against Electrogoniometer for Measuring Wrist Motion in Occupational Studies

Manivasagam

Yang

2022

Sensors

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Wrist velocity is an important risk factor for work-related musculoskeletal disorders in the elbow/hand, which is also difficult to assess by observation or self-reports. This study aimed to evaluate a new convenient and low-cost inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based method using gyroscope signals against an electrogoniometer for measuring wrist flexion velocity. Twelve participants performed standard wrist movements and simulated work tasks while equipped with both systems. Two computational algorithms for the IMU-based system, i.e., IMUnorm and IMUflex, were used. For wrist flexion/extension, the mean absolute errors (MAEs) of median wrist flexion velocity compared to the goniometer were <10.1°/s for IMUnorm and <4.1°/s for IMUflex. During wrist deviation and pronation/supination, all methods showed errors, where the IMUnorm method had the largest overestimations. For simulated work tasks, the IMUflex method had small bias and better accuracy than the IMUnorm method compared to the goniometer, with the MAEs of median wrist flexion velocity <5.8°/s. The results suggest that the IMU-based method can be considered as a convenient method to assess wrist motion for occupational studies or ergonomic evaluations for the design of workstations and tools by both researchers and practitioners, and the IMUflex method is preferred. Future studies need to examine algorithms to further improve the accuracy of the IMU-based method in tasks of larger variations, as well as easy calibration procedures.

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“…There are many issues associated with this demographic problem that is being explored by researchers in several disciplines from different perspectives (Bloom et al, 2016). The issues that arise concern the topics of social sciences (Sanderson and Scherbov, 2005), economics (Marton, 2018), and health sciences (Bálint and Kovács, 2015;Bevan, 2015), as well as their significant socio-geographical role due to territorial differences (Govaerts et al, 2021;Arvai et al, 2020;Pirisi and Trócsányi, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-aspect overview of mineral-water-based therapies of musculoskeletal disorders in Hungary

2022

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Demographic transformation, characterized by the aging of the population, is causing an increasing problem in developed countries. This change involves a significant increase in the number of chronic diseases, the health damage generated by which causes loss of life years due to deteriorating health and impairs quality of life. Among chronic diseases, the increasing frequency of musculoskeletal disorders has become characteristic of an aging society, which causes the greatest loss of life years in Hungary due to limitations. These problems mean increasing social, economic, and administrative pressure on the population and pose solution challenges for the spa town leaders and health decision-makers. There are several therapies available in the medical and health sciences to prevent and treat musculoskeletal disorders, with increasing emphasis on conservative therapies as the role of health increases. In Hungary, among these procedures, medicinal water treatment services based on natural healing factors available in spa towns play a key role, which is also the basis of medical tourism and part of the health care system. To solve the problems caused by musculoskeletal disorders, it is essential to know the occurrence of the disease and the treatment-use attitude of the patients, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the main goal of our research is to assist spa towns leaders and health decision-makers in the implementation of medical tourism developments and more optimal patient care. One of the part-aims of our research is to reveal the regional differences of the most common musculoskeletal diseases in Hungary based on secondary data. Our other research-part objective is to determine the impact of socio-demographic characteristics, health status, type of musculoskeletal disease, pain, and commitment to bath medicine care system on the future use of medicinal water treatment in patients with musculoskeletal disorders. Based on our results, we declare that the health status of the Hungarian population in terms of the most frequently occurring locomotor diseases is worst in Central Hungary, the greater part of the Southern Great Plain, and the northeastern part of the country. In terms of territory, we concluded that the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders is relatively low, and moderate inequality in Hungary. It also follows from our results that the indicators measuring regional differences selected can be successfully applied to examine the territorial inequalities of musculoskeletal diseases concerning medical tourism. We also found that the respondents' level of family income, place of residence by region, state of health, the degree of commitment to medicinal water treatment/service was found, furthermore the cost of treatment, and the cost of accommodation /travel, significantly affect the planned use of the medicinal water treatment in the future. Our results promote the implementation of more targeted medical tourism and health industry developments in spa towns.

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Prevalence and incidence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in secondary industries of 21st century Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Cited by 106 publications

References 52 publications

An Occupational Shoulder Exoskeleton Reduces Muscle Activity and Fatigue During Overhead Work

An Occupational Shoulder Exoskeleton Reduces Muscle Activity and Fatigue During Overhead Work

Evaluation of a New Simplified Inertial Sensor Method against Electrogoniometer for Measuring Wrist Motion in Occupational Studies

Multi-aspect overview of mineral-water-based therapies of musculoskeletal disorders in Hungary

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