Ignorance of ergonomics in dental practice: systemic review

Introduction: In Greek, “ergo” refers to work and “nomos” refers to natural systems.1,2 Ergonomics is the methodical sphere concerned in conjunction with the indulgent of interactions amongst human being as well as auxiliary fundamentals of a system and the profession that pertains concepts, principles, meth¬ods to scheme to augment human well-being by large system performance.3, 4
The purpose of this article was to summarize the findings all review articles and present the findings to create awareness of important ergonomic hazards and preventive strategies. Research show that eighty-five percent of the dental specialists complain of pain in at least one body region. This pain is associated with the poor stance and movements during the dental procedures.5 However, these predicaments can be evaded by collective mindfulness of the postures used for the duration of the work to encourage examining the impact of instrument use on upper extremity pain and tailing hale and hearty work practices.5, 6
Methods: The presentation of this systematic review is done by using COVIDENCE tool. The review included articles published in the last 10 years, on the MEDLINE, SCOPUS, Cochrane Library.9,10The search approach used amalgamation of free text terms-controlled vocabulary based on the following search strings: dentist + prevention + ergonomic, dentistry + neck pain.
Results: Among risk factors for the development of MSD’s, the most significant is that 87.5% of studies detected static posture during working hours, followed by repetitive movements (68.8% of reviews), muscle imbalances and individual characteristics including a sedentary lifestyle and obesity (43.8%).
Conclusion: Ergonomic depiction of dental work approaches has revealed various occupational risk factors inherent in dental procedures and their influence on a high degree of MSD observed among dentists. Well planned ergonomic intervention program can reduce the global burden of this problem.