The Association Between Combination of Hand Force and Forearm Posture and Incidence of Lateral Epicondylitis in a Working Population

Abstract

This study shows the evidence of the etiologic role of strenuous manual tasks in the occurrence of LE.

Lateral Epicondylitis and Physical Exposure at Work? A Review of Prospective Studies and Meta‐Analysis

“…After full-text reading, five papers were selected for the meta-analysis. (17)(18)(19)(20)(21) The studies, originating only from France and the United States, were published between 2001 and 2014, mostly in the last two years, and all in English (table 1). Among 6,922 included subjects (and 3,449 who were followed), 256 cases of incident lateral epicondylitis were diagnosed 2.5 to 6 years after baseline.…”

“…(17,19) Exposure was also assessed differently, 9 including self-reported exposure, (17)(18)(19) and measurements. (20,21) However, all relevant exposure was a combination of biomechanical exposure involving wrist and/or elbow (table 1). Information on associations was available for all five studies, with no need for further calculation.…”

Lateral epicondylitis: New evidence for work relatedness

“…All three studies were published in 2013; two were conducted in the United States, and one in Europe [8][9][10]. Lateral epicondylalgia is the term used for outcome since each study used a standard definition for possible epicondylitis that included specific symptoms and/or physical examination manoeuvre [11,12] (Table 1).…”

“…In a study from Washington State (Principal investigator B.A. Silverstein), 733 workers were included from 12 different manufacturing and service sector industries, with 611 workers (without epicondylitis) followed on average for 1.5 years [9]. The incidence of lateral epicondylalgia was 4.9/100 person-years, and was associated with forearm pronation ≥ 45 • for 40% of the time and power grip (both assessed by observation), with an estimated relative risk of 2.8 [1.…”

“…Different limitations were reported for each study, e.g. lack of representativeness of national workforce [9,10], attrition [8], self-reported assessment of diagnosis [8] or workplace physical exposures [8,10], and confounding factors [9]. However, one of the studies had a representative sample [8], two had low attrition rates and confirmatory physical examination [9,10], one had observations of exposure [9], and one a complete analysis of confounders [10].…”