Relationship between work and musculoskeletal complaints in speechlanguage pathologists and audiologists who make occupational audiometry

Abstract

Objective: To knowledge the occurrence and factors associated with musculoskeletal disorders in speech therapists and audiologists that make occupational audiometric tests. Method: all the 22 speech therapists and audiologists who were working at least one year answered questions about general, occupational data and the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (NMQ) for such symptoms over the period of 12 months and the last seven days. Descriptive statistics were used to show the results through the distribution of absolute and relative frequencies, arithmetic means and their standard deviation. The variables were tabulated using the chi-square test with significance at p ≤ 0.05. Results: the mean age was 29.5 years (SD = 4.9), 86.3% had musculoskeletal complaints in the last 12 months and/or in the last seven days. The body regions most affected were the neck, shoulders, wrists/hands/fingers, dorsal and lumbar spine. The weekly duration of work was significantly associated with complaints of pain in wrists/hands/fingers (p = 0.00). The presence of pain in the elbow (p = 0.01) and forearm (p = 0.02) correlated significantly with the number of hearing tests daily, and the number of periodic audiometry was significantly associated with the presence of pain in the elbow (p = 0.03) and lumbar (p = 0.05). Conclusion: speech therapists working in the area of occupational health seem to be exposed to musculoskeletal disorders probably associated to attitude and repeating movements related to their professional tasks at work.