Ergonomic Design of Dental Scaling Hand Tools to Alleviate the Prevalence of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in Dental Practitioners

Ergonomics plays a major role in dentistry. This is due to the type of work done by dentists and the duration of the work done. The dental practitioners are mostly affected by the musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) after the particular time span. MSDs usually occur due to the repetitive nature of work. One of the MSD which is quite common is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The prevalence of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is common among the workers who perform the job using their hands, wrists, fingers or upper extremity body parts. All over the world, studies have shown the increase in the occurrence of the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in the dentists. This disorder has by and large affected most of the dental practitioners and their work leading to the decline in their efficiency of work and affecting their lives badly. Although there are several methods by adopting which we can reduce the prevalence of CTS in dentists but in this review we will focus on the Dental hand tool design which are being used by dentists such as manual scaling hand tools or scalars. Scaling tool has been chosen as the parameter because scaling is often the repetitive task and is usually performed by most of the dentists for longer durations. Several studies have been done on the parameters affecting the scaling tool handle design which can reduce the muscle forces exerted by the dentists. Grip of the tool is also the parameter which determines the load on the muscles of fingers, hands and wrists. Lesser loads on fingers and hands are often taken as the safe parameter for designing hand tools. The loads and forces on muscles have been evaluated by using Electromyography techniques in most of the studies.