Predictive and Associated Factors of Musculoskeletal Injuries in Office Workers.

Musculoskeletal injuries and conditions represent a major public health problem, with significant social, economic, and health consequences. Office workers are forming a major group for musculoskeletal injuries as they have to work for a longer period of time on computer and sitting on a chair. Musculoskeletal discomfort in office workers is commonly caused by poor ergonomic workstation design, psychosocial, physical and organizational risk factor. There are several MSK disorders associated with computer use in people spending more than 9 hours or more every day using computer.

To combat workplace caused mental and physical exhaustion physical activity has been proven to be an efficient. Physical activity is known not to only treat but prevent the occurrence of a fore coming disease. Being physically active will lead to reduced stress levels and increased productivity. The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) is a physical examination used to measure essential movement patterns in a practical and dynamic way. Functional Movement screen was designed with a purpose of identify body asymmetries, assess mobility and stability within the kinetic chain of whole-body movements and to detect poor quality movement patterns. Other tools like modified Y-balance test have also been used to predict injuries.

Literature review: Previously in a study carried out on firefighters Contreras et al reported that 47% of the participants had an FMS score lower than 14 and they accounted for 72% of the total musculoskeletal injuries.

In another study carried out on Collegiate athletic association Division II athletes the overall prognostic accuracy of the FMS offered a slightly better than 50/50 chance of correctly classifying those most at risk for injury.

A study carried out to find the association between functional fitness scores calculated by FMS and musculoskeletal injury in police officers by Liana Lentz et al suggested that of all the participants, females accounted for 17.9% of the injured subjects.