Upper arm elevation and repetitive shoulder movements: a general population job exposure matrix based on expert ratings and technical measurements

Abstract

The updated Shoulder JEM can be used to present exposure-response relationships on measurement scales.

Surgery for subacromial impingement syndrome in relation to intensities of occupational mechanical exposures across 10-year exposure time windows

“…The study benefited from the fact that we were able to estimate both exposure intensity and exposure duration without recall-bias by linking registered D-ISCO 88 codes with The Shoulder JEM, which has shown good predictive validity in four studies 5–7 19. The exposure intensities of arm elevation and repetition were calibrated into measurement scales,15 and force intensities could be tentatively transformed into %MVE 16. The study also benefited from the fact that information on D-ISCO 88 codes, surgery for SIS and covariates was gathered through high-quality national longitudinal registers.…”

“…For repetition, median angular velocities <45°/s seemed safe according to the present study. Examples of job groups that exceed 45 o /s are postal workers (58 o /s) and kitchen assistants (59 o /s) 15. In our case–control study, where we used cumulative exposure measures,7 a mean intensity of approximately 40 o /s across a 10-year time window yielded a significantly elevated OR adj of around 1.5, but the risk might have been overestimated as we were unable to control for cumulative effects of other occupational mechanical exposures.…”

“…In an update of the The Shoulder JEM, we calibrated the expert-rated arm elevation and repetition estimates against technical measurements to obtain exposure estimates on measurement scales (‘predicted measured job exposures’) as described previously 7 15. The technical measurements were obtained using inclinometry for 36 of the 172 job groups in The Shoulder JEM and comprised 575 whole day measurements 15. We used the predicted measured job exposures in our main analyses (arm elevation >90° (min/day), repetition (median angular velocity, °/s)).…”

Surgery for subacromial impingement syndrome in relation to occupational exposures, lifestyle factors and diabetes mellitus: a nationwide nested case–control study

“…Exposure–response results on measurement scales would also facilitate future meta-analyses 1. We have recently upgraded the expert-based Shoulder JEM with exposure estimates on measurement scales for upper arm elevation and repetitive shoulder movements,22 and we used the upgraded JEM in the present study.…”

Cumulative occupational mechanical exposures during working life and risk of sickness absence and disability pension: prospective cohort study

“…During recent years, several JEM have been constructed to capture exposure to physical working conditions (14,16). However, only few studies have used mechanical exposure JEM, and most of these assess mechanical exposure in relation to development and consequence of different diseases or pain symptoms (14,(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22).…”