29th Annual American Dentistry Congress

Introduction: In Greek, “ergo” means work and “nomos” means natural systems or laws. The term ergonomics was rustled up by British psycholo¬gist Hywelmurrel, at the 1949 convention at the United Kingdom, which later steered the foundation of the ergonomic society. Ergonomics can be defined as, the scientific disci¬plines concerned with the indulgent of interactions

among human being and supplementary elements of a system, and the occupation that applies principles, data, meth¬ods and theory to scheme in order to augment human well-being and by large system performance. The good news is that these predicaments can be sidestepped by collective awareness of the postures used for the duration of the work, reforming the

workstation to encourage examining the impact of instrument use on upper extremity pain, neutral positions, and tailing hale and hearty work practices to lessen the stress of dental work on the practitioner’s body. This article introduces the signs, symptoms, and risk factors of musculoskeletal disorders. The article also converses the imperative issue of posture and offers

ten recommendations to recuperate your posture to allow you to work with efficiency coupled with comfort.

 

Materials & Methods: The presentation of this systematic review is in accordance with the PRISMA statement. Meta-analysis is done by using Covidence tool. The review included articles published in the last 10 years, from 2007 to 2017 on the MEDLINE, Scopus, and Cochrane Library. The search strategy used a combination of free text terms controlled vocabulary based on the following

 

keywords: ergonomic, dentist, musculoskeletal, posture, and prevention, neck pain, used with these search strings: dentist + prevention + ergonomic, dentistry + musculoskeletal + prevention, dentist + prevention + neck pain, additionally, we practiced a hand search on reference lists of the selected articles and reviews for a wider analysis. Relevant reports were selected

according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. Finally, the compatible full texts were independently assessed for definitive eligibility.

 

Results: Online research indicated 2098 references: PubMed (1719), Scopus (357) and the Cochrane Library (22). Of these, 604

were excluded because they were unrelated to dentistry and the occupational hazards of dental practitioners. Of the remaining

866 items were excluded due to duplication. The full text of 628 studies was assessed, 614 papers that did not meet inclusion

criteria were excluded. Ultimately, 14 studies were included in this review

Conclusion: Ergonomic characterization of dental work methods has revealed various occupational risk factors inherent in dental procedures and their contribution to a high degree of MSD observed among dentists. Well planned ergonomic intervention program can reduce the overall burden of this problem. By making small changes in work practices, instrument usage, posture, workstation setup, and health practices, you can greatly affect your ability to provide quality care over a long, healthy, and successful career in dentistry.