2007, Piran, Slovenia

Environmental Ergonomics XII
Igor B. Mekjavic, Stelios N. Kounalakis & Nigel A.S. Taylor (Eds.), © BIOMED, Ljubljana 2007
The non-deeper phenomenon is thought to be a symptom of disturbed neurovegetative regulation
and may result in the development of overt hypertension (Fava et al. 2005). It is worth noting a
very high number of extreeme deepers in examined group. Although no data from our own
research are available for comparison, results of recent research worldwide suggest that this is an
adverse prognostic symptom associated with an elevated risk of cerebral stroke (Izzedine et al.
2006). In the majority of the people, arterial blood pressure abnormalities and disturbed BP
regulation was detectable only by ABPM. It is particularly important to note that elevated blood
pressure was detected by ABPM in as much as 53% of people who had not reported
hypertension in their questionnaire sheets. This is alarming, as those people are considered to be
healthy.
In the study group, mean level of the chronic fatigue was 73.2 ±13.4 (medium-high). In 80%
of the patients the fatigue was moderate, and in 20% it was high. This was the highest level
compared to other professional groups; e.g. in firemen, the level of the fatigue was 56.5±21.3,
in the workers of an open-cast mine it was 54.8 ± 27.7, post office workers 68.1 ± 24.2, and in
the workers of a scientific research institute the level was 67.0±26.4. Such high fatigue might
had resulted also from unreasonably spending the leisure time, because the workers after the
night shift had only slightly more than 4 hours of sleep. To assess the effect of age on
workload tolerance, development of fatigue and the frequency of circulatory changes, the
study group was divided into 4 subgroups (table 5):
556
Groups Age
range
Table 5. Characteristics of study group by age.
age (mean±SD) Period of
employment
(mean±SD)
BMI Percentage of
smokers
1. n=12 20-30 25.0 ±2.3 3.1±2.9 25.8±3.4 25.0%
2. n=11 31-40 37.4±2.4 15.9±5.7 26.9±3.0 18.2%
3. n=14 41-50 44.8±3.4 22.0±6.9 28.1±3.7 26.7%
4. n=13 51-60 53.5±2.8 30.4±7.8 29.4±3.1 38.5%
p=0.05 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3,
2-4, 3-4
1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3,
2-4, 3-4
1-2, 1-3, 1-4,
2-3, 2-4, 3-4
insignifficant
difference
In the study group there was a high percentage of people reporting musculoskeletal
symptoms, such as low back pain (56% people), knee pain (43% people), neck pain (30%
people), and upper limb pain (20% people). 25% of the workers with such symptoms had
sought medical consultation. Symptoms like those could result from the specific character of
the job, which required maintaining awkward body postures for long periods of time. Our
analysis of the job characteristics confirmed a high risk of such symptoms. The frequency of
those symptoms was age-related. The highest proportion of the subjects reporting the
symptoms was noted among the 41-50 year-old workers. The manifestations were more
frequent than in the group of salesman studied by us earlier, where the symptoms were
reported by 20.5% people. When analysing BP parameters we have found that systolic BP in
all periods (BPSO, BPSD, BPSN) did not differ significantly between the different age
groups, while significant differences (p