Risk factors for shoulder disorders among French workers: prospective cohort study

Abstract

Objectives Shoulder disorders are common in the working population. This longitudinal study aimed to explore the relationships between personal factors and occupational organisational, psychosocial, and biomechanical factors and the incidence of shoulder disorders. Methods A total of 3710 workers in the Pays de la Loire region (Loire Valley area, France) were randomly included by their occupational physician in the Cosali cohort between 2002 and 2005. All workers completed a self-administered questionnaire about personal factors and work exposure, and using a standardised physical examination, occupational physicians diagnosed shoulder disorders. Between 2007 and 2010, 1611 workers were re-examined by their occupational physician. The 1,320 workers free of shoulder disorders at baseline were studied. A conceptual model was developed in which relationships between organisational, psychosocial, biomechanical, and personal factors at baseline and the incidence of shoulder disorders were assumed. Structural equation modelling was used to test the model. Results Shoulder disorders were directly associated with biomechanical factors and age but not with psychosocial factors. However, skill discretion and psychological demand influenced shoulder disorders indirectly through biomechanical factors. Exposure to a work pace dependent on an automatic rate and to a work pace dependent on customers’ demands were associated with biomechanical and psychosocial factors, but not directly to shoulder disorders. Conclusions This study identified the complex direct and indirect relationships between occupational factors and shoulder disorders. Our data confirmed our conceptual causation model: organisational and psychosocial factors were associated with biomechanical factors, while biomechanical factors were associated with the incidence of shoulder disorders.

Development and validation of a work-related risk score for upper-extremity musculoskeletal disorders in a French working population

“…Work organization characteristics have effect on the biomechanical and psychosocial features of the working situations which workers encounter (25). Previous findings suggest indirect impacts of factors related to work organization on the risk of UEMSD (14,15,25,31), it is a possible explanation of the lower weights assigned to organizational predictors in the scoring system. But, organizational factors are understudied in the epidemiological literature compared to the ergonomic literature (25,34).…”

“…In addition to age and gender, a set of 47 occupational risk factors were selected as potential predictors of UEMSD (supplementary material, www.sjweh.fi/ article/4119, table S1) using background knowledge, literature reviews (3) and previous results on the Cosali Cohort (5,11,12,14,15). Individual data on these occupational factors were collected through a selfadministered questionnaire at baseline, completed by workers before their clinical OP examination.…”

“…The measurement of the outcome was based on a standardized diagnostic process defined by the European consensus SALTSA for six different types of UEMSD (13). Occupational factors were selected as candidate predictors based on clinical knowledge, literature reviews (3,(26)(27)(28)(29)31) and previous results on the French Cosali cohort (5,11,12,14,15). They were collected before the diagnostic clinical examination, and the exposures were subsequently defined according to recognized criteria (13).…”

Effect of scapular posterior tilting exercise on scapular muscle activities in men and women with a rounded shoulder posture

“…During this process, different individual factors play roles, of them, gender is important and worth further investigation from clinical and biomechanical aspects. At the first level, epidemiological studies have demonstrated that shoulder pain is more frequent in women than men [ 11 , 12 ]. This higher risk of shoulder pain in women have been attributed to different anthropometrical, biomechanical and motor control-related differences that could affect motor behaviors [ 13 , 14 ].…”