ASSOCIATION BETWEEN CELL PHONE USAGE AND MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS IN SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN

The adverse effects of excessive mobile phone (MP) use on children include deprivation from sleep, increased risk of lack of concentration, depression, anxiety and obesity. No such study has been conducted in children from Pakistan. Objectives: To assess the association of MP usage and musculoskeletal disorders in school going children. Methods: This was a cross sectional survey. Data were collected from different private schools of Karachi, Pakistan. Convenient non probability sampling technique was used. A sample size of 385 students was taken keeping a confidence interval of 95% with 5% margin of error. Results: A total of 385 subjects participated. It was also noticed that 75.6% (291) students have smart phone and 5.2% (20) have conventional phone and remaining 19.2% (74) have camera phone. It was noticed that the participants 306 (79.5%) said they slept for 1–2[Formula: see text]h daily and 30 (7.8%) had sleep for 3–4[Formula: see text]h daily. One hundred and four 104 (27%) had noticed pain in neck. Conclusion: The use of MP for any activity was associated with sleep deprivation and pain in wrist/hands followed by neck and upper back pain. The usage of MP should be limited to avoid the stress on musculoskeletal parts of the body.

INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANTHROPOMETRIC MEASUREMENTS AND FOREARM POSTURES WITH GRIP STRENGTH IN YOUNG ADULTS

BACKGROUND: Grip strength is widely accepted as an indicator of maximum hand strength and contraction of active muscles of the hand and forearm. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess the effects of forearm posture (pronation, supination and neutral) and anthropometric variation on MVC grip strength and grip endurance time in young university adults. METHODS: Fifty healthy, right-handed men volunteered to participate in this study. The experiment was characterized by measuring MVC grip strength and endurance time of 50% MVC randomly in three different postures (supine, pronation and neutral). Performance was assessed in terms of dependent variables: MVC grip strength and grip endurance time. RESULTS: MANCOVA results showed no significant effect of posture on MVC grip strength ([Formula: see text]) and grip endurance time ([Formula: see text]). There was a significant effect of age ([Formula: see text]), height ([Formula: see text]) and forearm length ([Formula: see text]) on the grip endurance time in supine position. However, palm circumference had a significant effect on MVC grip strength ([Formula: see text]) in pronation posture only. The pronation forearm posture produces 7.4% more grip strength than a supine posture. In addition, the grip endurance time was improved in the supine position, compared to the neutral and pronation forearm posture. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that the MVC grip strength is affected by the weight and palm circumference. In addition, palm circumference was the most influential factor affecting grip strength. Thus, anthropometric and posture-specific grip strength data are essential for clinical and industrial applications. The results can be used to prepare guidelines for rehabilitation, health care, sport and medicine.

COMPARISON OF SCAPULAR MORPHOLOGY IN DEGENERATIVE AND TRAUMATIC ROTATOR CUFF TEARS

Background: Degenerative cuff tears have impingement pathophysiology due to altered scapular morphology as measured by increased critical shoulder angle (CSA), decreased lateral acromial angle (LAA) and increased acromion index (AI). But scapular morphology in traumatic tears has neither been studied nor compared with degenerative tears. Aim: To compare scapular morphology with CSA, LAA, AI between traumatic and degenerative tears and determine their reliability. Methods: This observational study includes 100 patients (50 with traumatic and degenerative tears). We analyzed MRI and standardized AP shoulder radiograph of these patients. Parameters, such as CSA, LAA, AI, were measured on AP radiographs by two separate observers in a blinded manner. The 1st observer repeated measurements after four weeks. We compared age, gender, degree of cuff tear, and CSA values, LAA, and AI between the two groups. Results: On comparison using chi-square test, degenerative group had significantly higher age, higher CSA (mean 37.55, SD 0.88 versus traumatic group mean 36.6, SD 0.95, [Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text], highly significant), higher AI (mean 0.73, SD 0.02 versus traumatic mean 0.69, SD 0.04 [Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text], highly significant), and lower LAA (77.14, SD 2.03 versus traumatic mean 78.36, SD 2.73, [Formula: see text]-value 0.013, significant). Interobserver and intraobserver reliability of parameters using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) revealed excellent (CSA, LAA) and good (AI) agreement. ROC curve analysis calculated sensitivity (0.7) and specificity (0.66) to diagnose degenerative tear for CSA above 37.05[Formula: see text]. Conclusion: Scapular morphology in traumatic tears differs from degenerative. CSA, LAA, AI can be reliably measured on standardized shoulder AP radiographs.

COMPARISON OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS IN RURAL POPULATION WITH VARIOUS JOINT DEGENERATIVE ARTHRITIS

Background and Purpose:Osteoarthritis patients often suffer from anxiety which can affect the disease prognosis. This study is aimed at assessing the various psychological dimensions in different joint arthritic subjects of the rural population and finding the most common joint arthritis that can lead to anxiety in the rural population. Materials & methods: A total of 252 subjects satisfied the inclusion criteria and were recruited for the study after written informed consent and were asked to fill in the GPS online through Google forms. The “feelings” subscale assesses the patient’s psychological stress due to pain and disease. The psychological dimensions of sub-section feelings of GPS were analyzed by one-way ANOVA to assess whether there is a difference on average in the scores among the three groups at a [Formula: see text] significant level. Tukey HSD was used for post hoc pairwise comparisons. Results: One-way ANOVA results showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the groups for fear, level of anxiety, depression, stress, and fatigue. Tukey HSD post hoc comparison revealed that the results were statistically significant for fear ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]) and fatigue levels ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]). The Tukey HSD post hoc comparison for levels of anxiety, depression, and stress was not statistically significant. Conclusion: From this study, we conclude that anxiety, fatigue, and fear are highly prevalent in hip osteoarthritis. Anxiety is associated with all joint osteoarthritis and can result in poor quality of living. We recommend physicians to emphasize psychological dimensions and address them at an early stage in order to achieve a better prognosis in degenerative joint diseases.

MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS IN OPERATING ROOM: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY

Aim: The present study sought to understand the semantics of surgical technologists about the causes and factors inducing musculoskeletal disorders in operating room medical staff. Background: The physical health of operating room technologists, affecting the health of patients, causes mental health problems and reduces occupational performance. Methods: A qualitative and phenomenological study was conducted. The statistical population included all surgical technologists of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, from which 10 individuals were selected by non-probability and snowball sampling methods, and in-depth interviews were carried out for them. Results: In data analysis, the primary code was extracted in the form of 14 sub-themes and 5 main categories, including management factors, facilities, manpower status, destructive factors of the work field, and miscellaneous factors. Conclusion: The operating room medical staff considers muscular discomfort and pain in the head, neck, wrist, back, and legs as skeletal disorder, and they believe that factors such as managerial measures, poor equipment and lack of facilities, manpower status, destructive factors of intensive, long, and repetitive work fields, and some miscellaneous factors are effective in their occurrence. Relevance to clinical practice: As the medical staff are faced with physical, mental, and psychological pressures due to the difficulty of work, lack of facilities, attitudes of supervisors and managers as well as colleagues, this research can be effective and useful in order to introduce more of these dimensions to the relevant authorities.

PLANTAR FASCIITIS: A NOVEL CROWDSOURCING APPROACH TO DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Plantar Fasciitis (PF) is a disorder of connective tissue that supports the longitudinal arch of the foot. The fascia runs along the sole with insertion to the heads of the metatarsal bones and origin in the calcaneus. It is one of the most frequent diagnoses for patients in general and foot clinics, and one of the common causes for heel pain which may develop into chronic heel pain, change the way we walk and lead to foot, knee, hip or back problems. PF is the most common type of plantar fascia injury. The purpose of this study is to describe the natural history of PF, including the ethnicity, early and main symptoms, aggravating factors, comorbidities and treatments for PF, based on the patient-reported data from active PF community in an online crowdsourcing platform, StuffThatWorks. Analyses were made in order to discover characteristics which have a clinical importance. Totally 3835 patients were included in this retrospective observational study. The results show that crowdsourcing is a valid approach for data collection, as expected results with regard to clinical aspects such as age-of-onset, early and main symptoms were witnessed. Furthermore, the patient-reported data show three characteristics which have a very high clinical relevance: high level of physical activity, being overweight and age. In addition, leads for future studies were established.

IS DISTRIBUTION OF PAIN RELATED WITH CENTRAL SENSITIZATION IN PATIENTS WITH LOWER LIMB OSTEOARTHRITIS?

Design: Cross-sectional study. Background: Osteoarthritis is one of the most common conditions in our society. A growing number of studies suggest the existence of central sensitization (CS) in a subgroup of osteoarthritic patients. One of the criteria included for the classification of CS pain is the expanded distribution of pain. As this criterion is a well-recognized sign of CS, a digital pain drawing (DPD) analysis would be useful to easily identify possible extended areas of pain distribution (PD) in patients with OA. Objective: To study the relationship between the percentage of distribution of pain in the lower limb for both knee and hip, in patients before hip or knee arthroplasty, and the Central Sensitization Inventory Questionnaire. Methods: Twenty women (mean [Formula: see text] years) with diagnosed chronic (over 3 months) knee ([Formula: see text]) and hip ([Formula: see text]) OA participated in the study, with intensity of pain from mild to severe, meaning pain [Formula: see text]/10 using the Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NPRS). The PD was analyzed via software created for this research, called “Pain Distribution Application”. Results: A statistically significant positive correlation between CSI and PD to the lower extremity OA (hip and knee) ([Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]) was found. The distribution of pain has a linear correlation with the results in CSI, of patients who tested positive for CS, i.e. with a score of [Formula: see text]. Conclusions: As the distribution of pain on the surface of the body (diffusion) increases, so does the score of people who test positive for CSI. Our results showed that calculating the distribution of pain with our application may have a utility as a CS screening tool. The PD threshold of 10% of the body area is an index for CS for chronic pain lower limb OA patients.