Abstract

OBJECTIVES
This study was conducted to determine the prevalence and status of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome in meat-processing workers and to assess the usefulness of diagnostic criteria using symptoms, physical findings and electrodiagnostic bests.
METHODS
The subjects were 34 female workers with average age of 43.1 +/-8.5 years and clinical studios including history taking for symtoms, physical examination and electrodiagnostic bests were conducted.
RESULTS
Using a case definition of positive symptoms and electrodiagnostic abnormalities, 8 workers were diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome and the prevalence was 23.5%. 5 workers(14.7%) had symptoms but no electrodiagnostic abnormalities and 2 workers (5.9%) had only electrodiagnostic abnormalitites. 19 workers(55.9%) had no symptoms and no electrodiagnostic abnormalities. There were no statistically significant differences in the prevalence of carpal tunnel syndrome between high repetitive work group and low repetitive work group among the workers. Age and daily working hours wart related to the prevalence of carpal tunnel syndrome at 0.10 significant level(p-value=0.10).
CONCLUSIONS
The combination of symptoms and night symptoms or symptoms and physical findings is a useful diagnostic criteria for screening of work-related carpal tunnel syndrome when electrodiagnostic test or a trained physician for physical examination are not available in that sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 0.63, 0.85, 0.56 and 0.88, respectively.