Analysis on the characteristics and patterns of work-related musculoskeletal disorders among sonographers in Guangdong Province / 中国职业医学

ABSTRACT

Objective To analyze the characteristics of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) among sonographers in Guangdong Province, and to explore the disease pattern of the cases. Methods A total of 512 sonographers from 31 hospitals in Guangdong Province were selected as the research subjects using stratified cluster sampling method. The prevalence of WMSDs in the past year was investigated using the Musculoskeletal Disorders Questionnaire, and the characteristics of WMSDs were analyzed. Latent class analysis was used to identify the disease pattern of WMSDs. Results The overall prevalence of WMSDs was 94.3%. The top five affected body parts were right shoulder, neck, right hand/wrist, lower back and right forearm/elbow, with the prevalence of 80.3%, 75.4%, 61.1%, 55.5% and 45.3%, respectively. The prevalence of WMSDs was higher on the right side for the shoulder, hand/wrist, forearm/elbow, hip/leg and knee compared with the left side (80.3% vs 31.3%, 61.1% vs 13.9%, 45.3% vs 10.0%, 17.4% vs 8.6%, 13.1% vs 8.4%, all P<0.05). The prevalence of WMSDs increased with work years, as well the prevalence of WMSDs in the top five affected body parts among the sonographers (all P<0.05). However, there were no statistical differences in prevalence of WMSDs between general hospitals and maternal and child health hospitals, tertiary hospitals and non-tertiary hospitals, Pearl River Delta hospitals and non-Pearl River Delta hospitals; there was also no statistical difference between different genders and age groups of the sonographers (all P>0.05). The best-fit latent disease pattern for sonographers WMSDs comprised three categories： symptom of neck-right shoulder, symptom of neck-lower back-right shoulder-right elbow-right hand/wrist, and symptom of multi-parts above the knees, with the latent probabilities of 0.438, 0.427 and 0.135, respectively. Conclusion The prevalence of WMSDs in sonographers is extremely high, with a dose-effect relationship with work years. The most common affected parts are neck, lower back and right shoulder, right hand/wrist, and right forearm/elbow. The prevalence of WMSDs in the right side of limb was higher than that in the left. WMSDs primarily occur in multiple parts simultaneously. The most common symptoms occur in the neck-right shoulder and neck-lower back-right shoulder-right elbow-right hand/wrist.