P. Loslever et A. Ranaivosoa, BIOMECHANICAL AND EPIDEMIOLOGIC INVESTIGATION OF CARPAL-TUNNEL SYNDROME AT WORKPLACES WITH HIGH-RISK FACTORS, Ergonomics, 36(5), 1993, pp. 537-554
This paper deals with the problem of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) thro
ugh investigations of both biomechanical and epidemiological data on s
eventeen high risk jobs. Biomechanical data were collected from contin
uous recording of prehension muscular efforts and wrist angular flexio
n-extension positions for each hand. In order to characterize both sta
tic and dynamic behaviours of signals, nine angle and four force indic
es were built for each hand. The epidemiological data evaluated the pr
obability to contract the CTS (prevalence) on the dominant hand, the n
on-dominant hand, and both hands simultaneously. Biomechanical and epi
demiological data were evaluated using multiple correspondence factor
analysis which may consider heterogeneous variables to clarify non-lin
ear relations in a very large data set. The CTS occurred twice more fr
equently on the two hands together (average 20%) than on the dominant
hand alone. Such a result confirmed the outcome of other studies that
non-occupational factors could be more important than occupational fac
tors. The prevalence for both hands was highly correlated with the fre
quency of flexion and use of high forces. High or low flexions appeare
d to be a greater risk factor than high or low extensions.