Work-related carpal tunnel syndrome has decreased across all US industries
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Work-related carpal tunnel syndrome is more prevalent in those who do labor-intensive work compared with clerical work; however, overall rates have decreased across all industries from 2003 to 2018, according to published results.
Using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics databases, investigators at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit analyzed work-related carpal tunnel syndrome (WrCTS) injuries in the U.S. population from 2003 to 2018. According to the study, the researchers performed linear regression, two-group t test and one-way analysis of variance to compare WrCTS injuries between workers in clerical and labor industries.
Overall, WrCTS injuries decreased across all industries during the study period. Notably, WrCTS decreased the most in the labor industry; however, labor workers still showed higher incidences of WrCTS compared with clerical workers, with manufacturing workers exhibiting the highest incidence of WrCTS injuries across all industries.
“This may suggest that labor-type workplace activities and exposures place workers at a higher risk of WrCTS injury than in the clerical-type workplace. Such trends may indicate how work-related actions of lifting, grip strength and forceful wrist motion may in fact contribute more to WrCTS than computer use,” the researchers wrote in the study. “Importantly, WrCTS injuries across all private industries have declined over the time period, but it is difficult to attribute this decrease to either improvement in worker safety and ergonomics or changes in reporting requirements,” they wrote.
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