Occupational musculoskeletal diseases in industrial workers in the Russian Arctic

Prevention of musculoskeletal diseases is one of the most important medical tasks in comprehensive programs to maintain the health of workers at enterprises in the Arctic. The aim: to study the causes and circumstances of the developmentas well as structure and prevalence of musculoskeletal diseases in industrial workers in the Arctic. We studied the data of social and hygienic monitoring in the section "Working conditions and occupational morbidity" and the Register of extracts from occupational disease (poisoning) records (Order of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation dated 05/28/2001 No. 176) in the subjects of the Russian Arctic. In 2007-2021, 2945 musculoskeletal diseases were first diagnosed in 2022 workers, ranking first in the structure of occupational pathology (28.5 %). Their main cause was increased labor severity (97.3 % of cases) due mainly to design flaws in equipment (36.7 %) and imperfect technological processes (40.3 %). Over 15 years, the share of musculoskeletal diseases in the overall structure of occupational pathology increased from 20.0 % to 34.4 % (p < 0.001).In addition, among persons with musculoskeletal pathology, the proportion of men increased (from 76.8 to 95.4 %, p < 0.001), the number of nosological forms of diseases per employee (from 1.05 ± 0.01 to 1.72 ± 0.06 cases, p < 0.001), the proportion of employees with occupational polymorbidity (from 4.3 to 32.6 %, p < 0.001), the proportion of radiculopathy in the structure of musculoskeletal pathology (from 62.7 to 76.5 %, p < 0.001), and the level of occupational morbidity (from 1.80 to 3.92 cases / 10 employees). The risk of developing musculoskeletal diseases in 2019-2021 exceeded the level of 2007-2009: OR = 1.33; 95 % CI 1.15-1.55. Prevention of musculoskeletal diseases, especially radiculopathy, among industrial workers in the Arctic has not yet yielded the necessary results, which requires the use of new tools and methodological approaches for solving this problem.