BAILLIERE'S BEST PRACTICE & RESEARCH: CLINICAL RHEUMATOLOGY
Abstract
Occupational exposures to vibration come in many guises, and
they are very common at a population level. It follows that an
important minority of working-aged patients seen by medical
services will have been exposed to this hazard of employment.
Vibration can cause human health effects, which may manifest in
the patients that rheumatologists see. In this chapter, we identify
the health effects of relevance to them, and review their epidemiology,
pathophysiology, clinical presentation, differential diagnosis
and vocational and clinical management. On either side of
this, we describe the nature and assessment of the hazard, the
scale and common patterns of exposure to vibration in the community
and the legal basis for controlling health risks, and we
comment on the role of health surveillance in detecting early
adverse effects and what can be done to prevent the rheumatic
effects of vibration at work.
