Methods: The target population of the present project was all the general and specialist dentists working in the city of Tehran. A list of the cell phone numbers of all dentists working in Tehran was prepared. After random selection of each dentist, we called him or her explaining about the project. The selected dentists completed a questionnaire requesting information on personal and professional background of the dentists, history of trauma, awareness of ergonomic principles and exercises to prevent MSD, and suffering from MSDs based on standard NMQ_E questionnaire. Chi-square test served for statistical analysis. Significance level was defined to be 0.05.
Results: From the 210 dentists, 178 dentists (85%) completed the questionnaire. Awareness of ergonomic principles to prevent MSD was reported by 34.5% of the participants, of which, only 36.2% reported application of these principles. Moreover, 44.2% reported that they were familiar with specific exercises to prevent MSD. Only 13.5% of those reporting familiarity with the exercises reported regular exercise. The most suffering sites were neck (72%), shoulders (58.4%), and hands/wrists (43.7%). The most significant associated factor was found to be history of trauma. Some other differences related to other factors also existed in the prevalence of MSDs.
Conclusions: Prevalence of MSDs among the dentists was high. It seems that the dentists should receive necessary education for prevention of MSDs in various forms including undergraduate and continuous dental education.