Transient Effects on the Risk of Occupational Injuries as an Acute Events: a Case-crossover Study / 예방의학회지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: To elucidate the transient effects on the risk of occupational injuries as acute events and establish an alternative proposal. METHODS: The study population comprised a total of 302 workers randomly selected from applications for occupational injury compensation reported to the Inchon local labor office from January 1, 1999 to December 31. A case-crossover design, where each case serves its own control, was applied to this study. Through a telephone interview, workers provided useful data concerning five job related stressful events such as company transfer, work load change, overtime work, exchange duty, and work-part transfer. They were asked whether there were stressful events within a week of the occurrence of injury and the degree of stress. Exposure status from one year prior was used as control information. In the end, the data provided by 158 of selected persons was used for the analysis based on the quality of the data provided by the participants. A conditional logistic regression was used to discover the transient effects on the risk of occupational injuries as acute events. RESULTS: The effect of a company transfer and work load change on occupational injury was statistically significant on the risk of occupational injuries as an acute event(RR=5.5, 95% CI=2.501-12.428; RR=3.1, 95% CI=1.963-5.017, respectively). Other stressful events were found to elevate the risk factor for the occurrence of occupational injury, but were not significant. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggested that transient stressful events elevated the risk factor for the occurrence of occupational injury.