بررسي شيوع اختلالات عضلاني - اسكلتي در دندانپزشكان

Prevalence of musculoskeletal pain among a group of Iranian dentists,(Tehran-1999)

Background and Aim: Dentistry is a job with high risk to develop musculoskeletal pain and disorders, mainly due to the repeated bad and unsafe positions during work. The results of conducted studies showed that Low Back Pain had a high prevalence before 1960, while neck, shoulder, wrist and hand showed a higher percent of pain and disorders but after introduction of sitting position. The aim of present study was to evaluate the rate of musculoskeletal pain in a sample of Iranian dentists. Methods and Materials: A total of 99 general dentists (66 men and 33 women) aged from 24-68 years participated in this study by completing a modified NORDIC questionnaire. All subjects who had a work history of 1-40 years and 3-16 hours day work were included in this investigation. Only 44.4% of participants had resting time between their patientsʹ visits (1- 15 minutes). Results: Findings of this study showed a 59.5% neck pain, 54.5% back pain, 41.4% shoulder pain, 38.4% wrist pain and 28.3% headache sufferers among the total population. A significant difference was found between men and women in headache only. with the higher rate seen in women (p=0.008). X2 test revealed that those dentists who had break during work, the prevalence and history of musculoskeletal pain was significantly lower (P<_0.05). Conclusion: More than half of the cases suffer from neck or back ache and a third from wrist and headache. So, a resting time between patientsʹ visit has an important impact on preventing work related musculoskeletal pain and disorders in dentists.