Pervasiveness of orthopedic disorders among office and manual workers: a comparative study

Background: Employees and Manual Workers often complain from awkward postures daily with exhausting way due to the lake of the number of employees especially in Governmental universities. Objective: To study the relationship between MSDs and work-related postures of physiotherapists staff and Manual Workers Employees in physical therapy Faculty of Suez University, Egypt. Methods: Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ) was used to survey the physical therapists’ musculoskeletal disorders, also Ovako Working Posture Assessment System (OWAS) was applied to evaluate, analyze and categorize the repeated work postures in 100 physiotherapists staff and Manual Workers. OWAS method was processed using WinOWAS software, involving 16 work postures. The collected data statistically analyzed using Excel and SPSS. Results: NMQ indicated that 61% and 79 of physiotherapists staff and Manual Workers Employees, respectively complained MSDs in at least in one of the body parts during last year. The most common orthopedic disorders were lower back pain (73%), neck (69%) and shoulder pain (60%). Results of OWAS classified 7 postures (44%) in category 1 with 64 frequencies, 6 postures (38%) categorized 2 with 30 frequencies and 3 postures (19%) categorized 3 with 6 frequencies. Conclusion: The major pervasiveness pains were in the lower back among physiotherapists staff and neck among Manual Workers Employees. OWAS work posture 4222 (category 3) were highly significant with lower back MSDs and partially correlated with neck MSDs. Also, work posture 2221 and 2222 (category 2) were significantly correlated with lower back and neck MSDs.