Musculoskeletal disorders(MSDs) are injuries and pain in the body’s joints, ligaments, muscles, nerves, tendons, and structures that support limbs, neck and back. Main risk factors of MSDs include repetition work, task with heavy force, contact stre...
Musculoskeletal disorders(MSDs) are injuries and pain in the body’s joints, ligaments, muscles, nerves, tendons, and structures that support limbs, neck and back. Main risk factors of MSDs include repetition work, task with heavy force, contact stress, and etc.. As the industrial developments, the incidence of occupational MSDs increase that excessive use of certain parts of the body and muscles.
The purpose of this study were understanding types and trends of research through analyzing studies of MSDs during last 15 years and suggesting directions for future studies. This study analyzed 971 previous researches in Ergonomics and Applied Ergonomics, International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, Journal of Ergonomics Society of Korea, and Journal of The Korean Society of Safety during 2000 to 2014. The keyword ‘musculoskeletal’ were used to search research papers and the researches were analyzed with Excel(MicrosoftⓇ. This study analyzed previous studies with 11 categories (publication year, country, method, apparatus, body area, work type, number of subject, data analysis method, cause of MSDs, and variable).
Researches in Korea related with prevention of MSDs has been decreasing since 2010, Despite researches related with prevention of MSDs had been increasing annually. In addition, methodology of researches were almost used questionnaire studies using legal risk assessment, but work analysis and experiment studies was used little. Furthermore, there are a lot of studies for upper extremities and back, but studies for neck are little. The research of prevention of MSDs in service industry recently increased, as the patients of MSDs was increasing nowadays.
Results of this study showed that more researches are needed for prevention of MSDs, and researches for the experimental study, researches for neck area and researches of office works were need.