ABSTRACT
Introduction:Interventional cardiology procedures (ICPs) have become the mainstay
treatments in cardiology diseases and increased rapidly. This study aims
to assess the occupational health hazards (OHHs) related to the
long-time wearing of lead personal protective equipment and reveal
health protection needs in interventional cardiologists.
Methods and Results: We invited interventional and
non-interventional cardiologists in tertiary III hospitals in China to
participate in an online cross-sectional survey on their health status,
utilization of personal protective equipment (PPE), and personal health
protection (PHP) needs. Propensity score methods were used for
comparisons of OHHs between the matched interventional and
non-interventional cardiologists. Totally, 642 interventional and 402
non-interventional cardiologists completed the survey. The
interventional cardiologists had
significantly higher incidence of body pain (56.6% vs. 24.2%,
p<0.001), bone and joint disease (21.7% vs. 8.6%, p=0.001),
cataract (3.5% vs. 0%, p=0.039), and anxiety (8.1% vs. 2.5%,
p=0.029) than the matched non-interventional cardiologists. The risk of
back pain was independently associated with
female gender, performing
percutaneous coronary intervention procedure or ≥2 types of
ICP, and the personal annual
volume of ICPs. Only 3.3% of
interventional cardiologists were satisfied with PPE and 83.0% of them
complained of physical toll caused by heavy PPE. 90.7% were willing to
conduct ICP without radiation exposure.
Conclusions: Body pain was the main OHH in interventional
cardiologists likely due to wearing heavy lead PPE for
long working hours. Besides
training more interventional cardiologists, the adoption of emerging
technologies without heavy lead PPE will be a promising way to reduce
the OHH burden.
Key Words : Interventional cardiologists, occupational health
hazard, back pain, personal protection equipment, health protection
needs.