Relationship of abnormal profiles and the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among academic staff men and women

Work-related musculoskeletal abnormalities are one of the main causes of musculoskeletal injuries, followed by job-disability among employees. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between abnormal profiles and the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among academic staff men and women.

The present study is of a causal nature after occurrence. The statistical population consisted of all employees of Isfahan University of Technology in 2018. A random sample of 64 men and 59 women were recruited as the study sample. A New-York-based assessment questionnaire was used to assess musculoskeletal-abnormalities and a Nordic questionnaire was used to assess the extent of MSDs. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and Spearman test were used in SPSS version24 software.

The highest musculoskeletal abnormality in the upper limb was observed in shoulder area (0.37%) and among the lower limbs the ankle (0.82%) was reported as the highest. In terms of correlation between pain, disability and injuries and MSDs with gender in the last 7 days, there was the highest correlation with shoulder (r=0.377), wrist (r=0.401) in the last 12 months and musculoskeletal abnormalities with shoulder area (r = 0.411). There was a significant difference in the prevalence of pain and disability with injury in the shoulder area (P = 0.001), wrist (P = 0.001), back (P = 0.002), buttocks (P = 0.032) and knees (P = 0.006).

The results indicate a high risk of MSDs and abnormalities in male and female employees. In order to reduce the incidence of abnormalities, it is necessary to perform corrective exercises and improve the ergonomics conditions of the work environment.