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Musculoskeletal disorders in upper limbs in dental students: exposure level to risk factors
Garcia, Patrícia Petromilli Nordi Sasso; Pinelli, Camila; Derceli, Juliana dos Reis & Campos, Juliana Álvares Duarte Bonini
Abstract
Aim: This study assessed the risk factors of undergraduate students to develop musculoskeletal
disorders (MSD) in the upper limbs, regarding gender, type of dental clinical procedure, mouth
region treated, and the four-handed dentistry practice.
Methods: Dental students enrolled in the
8th semester in the Araraquara School of Dentistry, UNESP, Brazil, were photographed while
practicing 283 dental procedures. The Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) method was used
to evaluate the working postures of each student. The photographs were evaluated and a final
risk score was attributed to each analyzed procedure. The prevalence of risk factors of developing
MSD was estimated by point and by 95% confidence interval. The association between the risk
factor of developing disorders and variables of interest were assessed by the chi-square test with
a significance level of 5%.
Results: The risk factors of developing MSD were high, regarding
most dental procedures performed by the undergraduate students (score 5: 7.07%, CI95%: 4.08-10.06%; score 6: 62.54%, CI95%: 56.90-68.18%). There was no significant association between
the RULA final score and gender (p=0.559), and type of dental procedure (p=0.205), and mouth
regions by arch (p=0.110) or hemi-arch (p=0.560), and the use of four-handed dentistry (p=0.366).
Conclusions: It can be concluded that gender, type of dental clinical procedure, mouth region
treated, and practice of four-handed dentistry did not influence the risk of developing MSD in the
upper limbs among the dental students evaluated; however, they are at a high risk of developing
such disorders.
Keywords
human engineering, dentistry, occupational health, students, dental
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