Prevalence of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Among Dentists Working in Tertiary Care Hospitals of Peshawar, Pakistan

Abstract

Objective: To determine the prevalence of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome among dentists working in tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar Methodology: A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 132 dentists working in tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar, Pakistan. The data was collected from four public and three private tertiary care hospitals via convenience sampling technique. A standard Boston Carpal Tunnel Questionnaire, Kamath and Stothard Carpal Tunnel Questionnaire, Numeric Pain Rating Scale and Phalen’s Test were used. The data was collected and analyzed by using SPSS version 25. Frequency and percentage were calculated for categorical variables and chi-square test was applied to find the association between variables. Results: A total of 132 dentists participated in this research out of whom 65 (49.2%) were males while 67 (50.8%) were females. Twenty-eight (21.2%) respondents reported the symptoms of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Fifteen (11.4 %) respondents had mild pain and 13 (9.8%) had moderate pain. The participants’ ages ranged between 25 and 30 years (66.7%), and 107 (81.1%) had a working experience of less than 10 years. Ninety-one (68.9%) dentists were working for 6-8 hours per day and 57 (43.2%) of the participants had a normal body mass index (BMI) ratio. Conclusion: Dentists who work in hospitals of Peshawar appear to suffer from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Dentists who have more hours of contact time with patients per day have increased risk of CTS symptoms but no association was found between gender and CTS symptoms. Furthermore, the symptoms of CTS increased with age.