Male and female rate differences in carpal tunnel syndrome injuries: Personal attributes or job tasks?

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) exacts a significant toll on the health and pr oductivity of American workers. In 1996, 29,937 workers lost time from work due to CTS. Half of these were out for more than 25 days, compared to a me dian of 5 days for all injuries/illnesses. There are striking gender dispar ities in CTS rates. Overall, three times more women suffer from CTS than me n. While some authors have emphasized the role of gender attributes in this risk disparity, the multifactoral causes of CTS, and the sex segregation o f women into jobs with high-risk tasks, may be obscuring the work-related c ontributions to CTS risk. We argue here that men and women doing the same w ork tasks will have similar rates of CTS. To examine this premise, we used Bureau of Labor Statistics injury counts (numerator) and census data from t he Current Population Survey (denominator) to determine injury rates of CTS for both men and women in six high-risk occupations: (1) assembler, (2) la borer-nonconstruction, (3) packaging and filling machine operators, (4) jan itors and cleaners, (5) butchers and meat cutters, and (6) data entry keyer s. Variable job tasks exist within five of the six high-risk occupational t itles. Among those live, the male to female (M:F) risk rate ratio ranged fr om 0.29 to 0.50. However, the sixth occupational title, data entry keyers, which requires a single physical task, had a risk rate ratio of 1.06. This suggests that an equal risk between genders exists when the occupational ta sks (exposure) are truly similar. Job task analysis unmasks potential biase s that may wrongly attribute disproportionate CTS rates to gender attribute s. This focus on gender attributes fails all workers because preventive int erventions in the workplace are deferred. It fails women disproportionately because they are overrepresented in jobs at high risk for CTS. (C) 2000 Ac ademic Press.