Musculoskeletal Pain in Dentists: Protecting Yourself in the Workplace

Back pain is a common complaint amongst the US work force and is the most common reason people see primary care physicians. This presents a large burden on industry in the workplace and economy. It has been estimated that people who suffer from back pain will miss twelve more days of work per year than their healthy counterparts [1]. The economic impact of this results in a loss of 100-200 billion dollars from lost productivity in the workplace [2]. There is no greater evidence of this burden than among dental professionals. Research estimates that 33-87% of dentists experience musculoskeletal pain in their back, neck, and shoulders [1,3-7]. Even more alarming is that these complaints are equally as common amongst dental trainees as they are practicing dentists, with Rising et al showing that over 70% of dental students report having back pain by their third year [8]. These results indicate that some dentists are practicing their entire careers suffering from musculoskeletal pain, which by definition would classify the pain as a chronic pain syndrome. While many dentists may be able to adjust to and work through their chronic pain, it is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance and heart disease. Therefore, it is imperative that dentists become knowledgeable about musculoskeletal health and how to prevent musculoskeletal pain in order to have a sustainably healthy long-term career. In this literature review, we have identified 17 articles from the PubMed Database for scientific literature. Keywords of “musculoskeletal pain dentist” and “dentist occupational health pain” were used to search for articles. 50 abstracts were reviewed, and these were narrowed to 17 articles for this review based on relevance, recent studies, and quality of study. We have compiled the qualitative results and important findings from the results of the studies to compose this review of current findings on musculoskeletal pain in dentists.