Journal of Ergonomics
Open Access

Abstract

Lateral Epicondylitis: Impact on Demographic Variables

Pradeepika Samagh, Kavita Sudhakar and Rohit Jindal

Background: Lateral epicondylitis is a repetitive trauma disorder which is caused due to over-use or over-stress of the wrist extensors of the forearm. The primarily complaint of the patient is that he suffers from pain and decreased function which affects the basic activities in daily life. The present study was conducted to assess the impact of Lateral epicondylitis on different demographic variables.
Methods: A total of 52 diagnosed cases of Lateral epicondylitis of elbow who fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria were taken and included in the study. A detailed assessment of the patients was done which included the demographic and examination variables measurement.
Results: Unpaired t test was used to measure the difference in variable of two groups and Karl Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to determine the correlation between two entities. All of the subjects were in fourth and fifth decade of life with 96.15% subjects had the dominant side affected. There were 31 females (59.6%) and 21 males (40.4%) in the study signifying females were more affected than males and majority of the sample had normal BMI. There was no significant correlation between age of patients and physical and mental component of QOL (p = 0.888, p = 0.507). Majority of the patients had their dominant side affected and only 3.85% had their nondominant side affected thereby making the 2 groups incomparable statistically. No statistically significant correlation was found between the BMI and physical and mental component of QOL of the patient. (p = 0.977, p = 0.991) There was no significant difference between the quality of life of males and females. (p = 0.591, p = 0.782) When comparing the quality of life of domestic population, working population and tennis player there was no statistical significant difference found between the groups. (p = 0.993, p = 0.786).
Conclusion: No significant difference between the demographic factors of gender, age, BMI and side affected was seen suggesting LE equally affects all the demographic variables. But, on comparison of mean scores it was seen that women had lower scores than men. In addition, people with affection of dominant hand were seen to be affected more with lateral epicondylitis.