T. Allahyari, H. R. Khalkhali, F. Khanehshenas,
Volume 3, Issue 4 (2-2014)
Abstract
Introduction: Manual dexterity impairment due to wearing latex and nitrile gloves among health care employees and laboratory personnel can be a remarkable problem because of its adverse outcomes. The present study was conducted to “compare the effect of using latex and nitrile laboratory gloves on hand dexterity”.
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Material and Method: In a semi experimental study design, 30 university were students randomly selected from Urmia University of medical sciences. Subjects assigned in three experimental conditions, such as the control condition (without gloves), with latex glove and with nitrile gloves. Then, dexterity level of fine finger and gross of the subjects were calculated using the Purdue pegboard test. Repeated measures one-way ANOVA test and T-test and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were used for statistical analysis.
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Results: The result showed that the differences between three groups of laboratory conditions from the level of gross and fine finger dexterity were statistically significant (p‹0.05). As the latex gloves showed significant and positive effect on gross and fine finger dexterity comparable with nitrile gloves and control group but there was no significant difference between the gross and fine finger dexterity of nitrile gloves when comparing with the control group. In other words, the nitrile gloves had not negative effect on gross and fine finger dexterity.
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Conclusion: Considering that there was no significant difference in the score of both fine finger and gross hand dexterity while using nitrile gloves as compared to the control condition (without gloves), means that use of nitrile gloves has no adverse effect on hand dexterity therefore, using nitrile gloves is recommended as a alternative for the latex gloves, considering the additional advantage of no allergic reaction in this gloves.
Hossein Marvimilan, Iraj Mohebbi, Hamidreza Khalkhali, Mohammad Hajaghazadeh,
Volume 9, Issue 1 (4-2019)
Abstract
Introduction: Physical workload is one of the main risk factors in developing of musculoskeletal disorders in construction workers. The current study was carried out to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and its relationship with demographic characteristics and physical work load index (PWLI)in construction workers.
Material and Methods: This investigation was a descriptive and cross-sectional study in which 162 subjects including 75 rebar and 87 bricklayer workers were participated. Nordic musculoskeletal and physical workload questionnaires were employed as the tools of this study. Chi-squared and logistic regression tests were used for statistical analysis in SPSS 21 software.
Results: The mean of age and working experience of construction workers were 34.6±8.6 and 11.2±6.8 years, respectively. The most prevalent symptoms were in the body regions of upper back (57.4%), lower back (35.8%), and neck (30.2%). In the univariate analysis, the musculoskeletal symptoms of shoulders, low back, feet, knees, and thighs with PWLI and the upper back pain with age, working experience, and working hours had significant relationships (P<0.05). According to logistic regression analysis, with the increase of the value of PWLI to more than 90 percentile, the chance of having symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders in low back, knees, and feet and also with the increase of working hour to more than 8 hours, the chance of having symptoms in low back and feet increased significantly.
Conclusion: The prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders was high in the studied construction workers. Most of the musculoskeletal symptoms were correlated with PWLI. Therefore, PWLI could be used to determine the construction jobs with the high risk of musculoskeletal disorders. To reduce the symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders in construction workers, the reduction of sources of physical workloads such as heavy material handling and awkward postures are proposed. It is also recommended that the working hours be limited to less than 8 hours.
