Work-related musculoskeletal disorders in Korean farmers

Chul Gab Lee

doi:10.5124/jkma.2012.55.11.1054

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Lee: Work-related musculoskeletal disorders in Korean farmers

Focused Issue of This Month

Work-Related Diseases and Injury of Korean Farmer

Journal of the Korean Medical Association

Journal of the Korean Medical Association 2012; 55(11): 1054-1062.

Published online: 16 November 2012

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5124/jkma.2012.55.11.1054

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders in Korean farmers

Chul Gab Lee, MD

Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Chosun University School of Medicine, Gwangju, Korea.

Corresponding author: Chul Gab Lee, cglee@chosun.ac.kr

Received 23 September 2012 Accepted 7 October 2012

(open-access):

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This paper evaluates the current state of work-related musculoskeletal disorders of Korean farmers. Korean farmers are exposed to a multitude of ergonomic risk factors, and have high rates of musculoskeletal disorders such as backpain and knee osteoarthritis, while hip osteoarthritis is relatively low. As of 2010, the average age of Korean farmers is 62.3, and the average period of their work in agriculture is 33.3 years. Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish the influence of natural aging and farm work on the development of musculoskeletal disorders. It is necessary to conduct research on a correlation between specific diagnosis such as rotator cuff syndrome, and farm work in general because farmers complain of a great deal of pain.

Keywords: Korean farmer, Work-related musculoskeletal diseases, Knee osteoarthritis, Back pain

Figures and Tables

Figure 1

Musculoskeletal symptoms by body part and farming type. UE, upper extremity; LE, lower extremity.

Figure 2

Farming type Korea (From 2010 Census of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries [Internet]. Daejeon: Statistics Korea; 2011) [7].

Figure 3

A case of lumbar degenerative kyphosis and both knee osteoarthritis. (A) Front view, (B) lateral view, (C) L-spine lateral view (From Song HS, et al. Korean J Occup Environ Med 2010;22:279-289, according to the Creative Commons license) [8].

Figure 4

Risk factors of knee osteoarthritis and backpain - squatting and stooped posture (From Song HS, et al. Korean J Occup Environ Med 2010;22:279-289, according to the Creative Commons license) [8].

Figure 5

Risk factors of neck, shoulder, and wrist in fruit farming.

Table 1

Population and farm manager of the Korea

Values are presented as number (%), thousand.

From 2010 Census of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries [Internet]. Daejeon: Statistics Korea; 2011 [7].

^a)Manager/population proportion.

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