Article

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effect of demographic and occupational factors on the
severity of the acute occupational hand injuries. METHODS: Patients with acute
hand injuries presenting to the emergency department of the Ege university
hospital between 01.08.2008 and 27.02.2009 were included.
A questionnaire
investigating demographic and occupational factors of the patients and their
injuries was filled out for each patient. Modified Hand Injury Severity Score
(MHISS) was used to assess the severity of the injury.
RESULTS: A total of 144
subjects were included. Forty-three patients had occupational hand injuries. Age
at injury, occupation, and main earning status did not alter the MHISS score
significantly. Also, the mechanism of injury, occupational experience, timing of
the injury, glove use, safety training did not have a significant effect on the
injury severity. The injury pattern was found to have a statistically significant
effect on the MHISS score. CONCLUSION: The potentially modifiable factors such as
the working conditions, safety training and use of gloves are important in the
etiology of occupational acute hand injury. Most probably, in this study the size
of the sample was not large enough to be able to demonstrate any relation between
these and the injury severity. However, attempts to modify these factors by
various strategies may reduce the incidence of acute hand injury at work.
Precautions and widespread educational programs can prevent occupational acute
hand injury.
CI - Copyright A(c) 2011. Published by Elsevier SAS.

Langue : ANGLAIS