Body pain - an unheeded personal health hazard in interventional
cardiologists: A national online cross-sectional survey study in China
Abstract
Introduction: Interventional cardiology procedures (ICPs) have become
the mainstay treatments in cardiology diseases and increased rapidly.
This study aims to assess the occupational health hazards (OHHs) related
to the long-time wearing of lead personal protective equipment and
reveal health protection needs in interventional cardiologists. Methods
and Results: We invited interventional and non-interventional
cardiologists in tertiary III hospitals in China to participate in an
online cross-sectional survey on their health status, utilization of
personal protective equipment (PPE), and personal health protection
(PHP) needs. Propensity score methods were used for comparisons of OHHs
between the matched interventional and non-interventional cardiologists.
Totally, 642 interventional and 402 non-interventional cardiologists
completed the survey. The interventional cardiologists had significantly
higher incidence of body pain (56.6% vs. 24.2%, p<0.001),
bone and joint disease (21.7% vs. 8.6%, p=0.001), cataract (3.5% vs.
0%, p=0.039), and anxiety (8.1% vs. 2.5%, p=0.029) than the matched
non-interventional cardiologists. The risk of back pain was
independently associated with female gender, performing percutaneous
coronary intervention procedure or ≥2 types of ICP, and the personal
annual volume of ICPs. Only 3.3% of interventional cardiologists were
satisfied with PPE and 83.0% of them complained of physical toll caused
by heavy PPE. 90.7% were willing to conduct ICP without radiation
exposure. Conclusions: Body pain was the main OHH in interventional
cardiologists likely due to wearing heavy lead PPE for long working
hours. Besides training more interventional cardiologists, the adoption
of emerging technologies without heavy lead PPE will be a promising way
to reduce the OHH burden.