Prevalence of work related musculoskeletal disorders and analysis of working posture using rapid entire body assessment tool amongst the sewing machine operators in a garment industry: A cross sectional study.

This Cross-sectional study aimed to find out the prevalence of WMSDs, the working posture using REBA and secondarily assessed the different level of PA and its influence on development of WMSDs amongst the sewing machine operators. The study was approved by the institutional ethics committee and was conducted in a garment industry consisting of 550 sewing machine operators in garment department working in various units. After explanation of purpose of study those participants who fulfilled the criteria’s were recruited. 100 participants voluntarily participated in the study. Consent was obtained from these participants. Outcome measures used were Örebro Musculoskeletal pain questionnaire (ÖMPQ) for prevalence, Rapid Entire Body Assessment tool (REBA) for posture evaluation, Quick Exposure Check tool (QEC) to identify the exposure risk of body part for development of WMSDs and International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) to find the level of PA of workers in their daily routine. Data was collected, coded, tabulated and analyzed using SPSS 24 software. Descriptive statistics - frequency distribution in percentage was calculated, to find out association of WMSDs chi- square was applied and to find out relationship Spearman Rank correlation coefficient (r) was calculated. The study revealed 70% of the participants suffered from WMSDs, low back pain was the commonest complaint and many of participants had anxiety and depression due to their pain. 24.29% also complained of eye discomforts. The study also demonstrated that 33% of participants had varying levels of stress.

The participants had poor posture that needed investigation and immediate change in their workstation, with 55% having high risk posture scoring between 8 – 10 and 44% of them had REBA score ≥11. Neck had very high exposure risk for the development of WMSDs, whereas back, shoulder/arm and hand/wrist had high exposure risk. Lastly, most of the participants had high PA, however no or little positive association was found between PA and WMSDs. The study concluded high prevalence of WMSDs amongst the sewing machine operators and they have poor posture with very high-risk exposure to neck region. Additionally, PA had little or no positive influence in the commencement of WMSDs.