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Finger Osteoarthritis and Differences in Dental Work Tasks

¹ Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Topeliuksenkatu 41a A, 00250 Helsinki, Finland;
² Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Department of Occupational Medicine, Helsinki, Finland;
³ Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Department of Physiology, Helsinki, Finland;
⁴ Institute of Dentistry, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; and
⁵ Department of Radiology, Peijas Hospital, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Vantaa, Finland

^* corresponding author, Svetlana.Solovieva{at}ttl.fi

Mechanical load has been proposed as a risk factor for hand osteoarthritis. Dentists produce high manual forces in their work tasks. We studied whether the pattern of dental work tasks was associated with finger osteoarthritis. Radiographs of both hands of 291 middle-aged female dentists were examined for the presence of osteoarthritis. Patterns of dental work tasks during work history were empirically defined by cluster analysis. Three patterns emerged reflecting high, moderate, and mild task variation. Age, specialization, years in clinical work, various activities requiring hand use, family history of Heberden’s nodes, body mass index, and smoking were accounted for in logistic regression analyses. The dentists with a history of low task variation had a greater prevalence of osteoarthritis in the thumb, index, and middle fingers compared with dentists with high variation (OR 2.22; 95%CI 1.04–4.91). The pattern of dental work task history is associated with the localization of osteoarthritis in the fingers.

KEY WORDS: osteoarthritis • finger joints • dentists • variation in work tasks