Comparison between methods of assessing the risk of musculoskeletal disorders on upper limb extremities: A study in manual assembly work

Abstract

The upper limbs extremities are more vulnerable to the development of musculoskeletal disorders, intrinsically related to professional manual assembly. There are several methods that assess the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders on upper limbs, yet there are few to assess their extremities, specifically the joints of the fingers. This study aims to compare and evaluate the adequacy and sufficiency of ergonomic analysis methods in assessing the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders of the upper limbs extremities, in manual assembly work of a medical device. ART and OCRA checklist methods were selected, and the results compared with the results of the Strain Index method. There were verified statistically significant differences between the three methods applied (p < 0.001), concluding that, according to this study, methods that better assess the risk are, in descending order, the Strain Index, OCRA checklist and ART.