Associated risk factors and prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in Peruvian undergraduate dental students: A multivariate analytical study

Abstract

Aim: To determine the risk factors and the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders in dental students in a Peruvian University. Materials and Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional, observational study was performed. The Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire was used to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders. A total of 149 randomly selected Peruvian last year dentistry students were included. The sample size was obtained using the proportion estimation formula. To determine the associations, χ2 test was used. In addition, odds ratio (OR) was used to quantify the strengths of associations between the variables studied. All the analyses were performed with the Stata software, version 12.0, establishing a level of significance of P < 0.05. Results: In relation to the prevalence of risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders according to gender, the logistic analysis showed that only the variables, such as work change, pain during the last year, pain episode duration, and treatment, were not associated with the risk factors in the crude logit model made with OR = 3.5, confidence interval (CI) (0.6–4.7); OR = 0.9, CI (0.6–1.5); OR = 1.5, CI (0.9–2.5); and OR = 1.5, CI (0.7–2.5), respectively. Besides, according to the academic semester (Internship, Clinic I, II, III, and IV), only the variables such as work change, pain during last year, duration of the painful event, and treatment were not associated with the risk factors with an OR = 2.6, CI (0.4–3.7); OR = 0.9, CI (0.6–1.5); OR = 1.3, CI (0.7–2.7); and OR = 1.3, CI (0.6–2.3), respectively. Conclusion: Pain in the previous year was reported by 95.2% of undergraduate dentistry students studied; however, only 27.7% received treatment to alleviate the pain. So dentistry students report musculoskeletal pain due to inadequate body and postural positions. Thus, the study has a clinical impact because the main factors associated with musculoskeletal disorders of Peruvian dental students were known to establish therapeutic strategies and improve these conditions.