Knee Disorders among Union Carpenters
Knee disorders have produced costly disability to carpenters and have caused them early departure from work. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the characteristics of knee disorders and to determine the occurrence of such adverse health problems. Records from the New England Carpenters Benefit Funds were used to identify cases of knee disorders and examine the distribution of specific disorders among union carpenters since the early 1990s. Clinically informed algorithms were developed to identify presumed incident cases and group similar types of knee injuries and disorders into three categories: acute, subacute, and chronic. Based on these rules, 4,802 cases of knee disorders were identified among 27,610 eligible medical visits during 1991-2006. There was an estimate of 10,500 members in the database, so the incidence rate of knee disorders during the 16-year period was approximately 286 per 10,000 person-years. Among those cases, the most frequently occurring single type of knee disorder was osteoarthritis accounting for 28.6％, followed by acute meniscal tear (24.8％) and subacute meniscal tear (11.0％) which indicated a combined total of 35.8％ for meniscal tear. The overall percentage for bursitis was 11.9％. The three categories of acute, subacute, and chronic knee disorders made up for 40.6％, 30.9％, and 28.6％ of the total incident cases, respectively. When these knee disorders were linked to the types of carpenter local union, it was found out that general carpentry, pile drivers, and floor coverers followed the similar pattern of distribution of knee disorders, however, floor coverers had a much higher percentage of bursitis (24.3％).
Lu Yuan Bryan Buchholz Scott Fulmer Xiaolu Jing
Southeastern Louisiana University University of Massachusetts Lowell
国际会议
17th World Congress on Ergonomics(第十七届国际人类工效学大会)
北京
英文
1-6
2009-08-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）