Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders among Radiologists in Nigeria

Prevalence of Reported Symptoms of Musculoskeletal Disorders among Doctors at the University of Port-Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Nigeria

“…The prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal system disorders among doctors working at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital was found to be 90.6%. This prevalence is corroborated by other high prevalence rates of work-related musculoskeletal system disorders reported among radiologists (95.2%) [20] and sonologists (97.5%) [5] in Nigeria; as well as rates of 88.4% and 78.75% reported among dentists in Egypt [25] and Cameroon [17] respectively and prevalence rates of 75.17% among sonographer [9] and 95% among surgeons [29] in Pakistan and Iran respectively. This notwithstanding, the high prevalence rate of these disorders is not corroborated by other prevalence rates reported by several authors in Nigeria who reported work-related musculoskeletal disorder prevalence rates of 60.7% among doctors in a study among health care workers of the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Enugu [30]; 49.7% reported in a study carried out among clinical health personnel of a Nigerian tertiary health facility in Ogun State 21 , 45.4% and 25.3% among dentists and physicians respectively in a study carried out among health care professionals and a prevalence of 58% among doctors in a study carried out in Mangalore, India [31].…”

“…It is however not supported by the findings of other authors in which most commonly affected body regions by work-related disorders of the musculoskeletal system included the neck, the shoulder as well as the lower back regions of the body. This disagreement could have been due to the respondents of these studies having more active involvement of the neck, shoulder and lower back regions of their bodies as a result of their work requirements as radiologists, sonologists and dentists [5,20,27]. 99 (49.2%) of the respondents experienced the disorders during working periods.…”

“…Within sub-Saharan Africa, this problem still remains common with prevalence of 65.4% among staff in the hospital in a study in Tunisia [15]; 73.2% (at more than one site), 78.75% and 48.2% musculoskeletal disorder symptoms reported among dental personnel in Cameroon and Libya respectively [16,17] as well as prevalence of 69.74% and incidence of 54.26% reported among South African General Surgeons and Dentists respectively [18,19]. A prevalence rate of 97.5% of these disorders was reported among sonologists 5 and a prevalence of 49.7% among clinical health workers in a Nigerian tertiary health facility and 95.2% among radiologists [20,21]. Musculoskeletal disorder symptoms have also been observed among dental personnel practising in Edo State, Nigeria with wrist pain, waist pain and body pain/weakness recording prevalence of 66.7%, 76.7% and 84.4% respectively [22].…”