[Profile of occupational disease outpatients and the presence of repetitive strain injury].

OBJECTIVE To assess the profile of outpatients seen at an occupational disease clinic of a general and repetitive strain injury (RSI) patients by using multivariate analyze. METHODS The first 565 visit registries for the year 1996 were assessed regarding their social and demographics aspects, work characteristics, and diagnosis. All the variables were analyzed by univariate analysis method. Bivariate data were analyzed using Chi square test (chi2) for categorical variables, comparison of means or ranges for quantitative and categorical variables. Multivariate data were analyzed using log-linear models with logit-transformation to identify the groups with a larger proportion of RSI. RESULTS Women sought the occupational diseases clinic more frequently than men, and there was a predominance of RSI cases. The occupation distribution was in order of priority as following: office workers, factory workers, and service workers. Of them, 56.9% were from the economic sector of services. RSI was seen in 56% of the patients diagnosed at their first visit. CONCLUSIONS The analysis confirms the trends seen in the 80s regarding the epidemiological changes in occupational diseases, when RSI started to be identified and displaced to a secondary position the other common diseases (due to physical and chemical hazards) because of inadequacy of ergonomics.