Incapacity for work of employees of the selected metallurgical plant related to age.

Evaluation of the health state of employees in relation to the working environment is one of the main tasks of occupational medicine. The specified results represent a part of a methodically oriented project which was focused on evaluation of: age structures of employees in the metallurgical plant being monitored in comparison with the age structure in the whole region, evaluation of the health status of employees in the plan by means of absolute and relative indicators of morbidity and even their dependence on age. The analysis was carried out during three successive years in approximately 10 000 employees of a metallurgical plant. The selected six groups of diagnoses represented from 40 % to 50 % of all employees suffering from a disease. Particularly the following diagnoses according to the International Classification of Diseases were involved there: I10-I15 (hypertensive disease), I20-I25 (ischaemic heart disease), J00-J06 (acute infections of upper respiratory airways), K20-K31 (diseases of oesophagus, stomach and duodenum), M15-M19 (arthroses) and M50-M54 (dorsopathies). The age structure of employees related to men and women was considerably statistically significantly different from the age structure of the region. From the economic point of view on incapacity for work, we consider the number of days of absence from work for the reason of the disease as an indicator with the highest informative value. We noted two dominative maxima in men and women for this characteristic. A proportion of patients with acute infections of upper respiratory airways ranged from 40 % to 50 % out of total cases of diagnoses we have followed up, the highest number of patients was in men aged 20-24 with a subsequent significant decrease. We did not find any noticeable dependence on age for this diagnosis in women, only a slight increase in older age categories was evident. Dorsopathies are the second most frequent group; they were from 30 to 38 % out of all monitored diseases. The age dependence was evident especially in women aged 40+. Considering duration of incapacity for work and its repeatability, dorsopathies seem to be the most relevant health problem in employees in heavy industry, and especially in women. The participation of the remaining four selected groups of diseases is relatively low. Both in men and women, the hypertensive disease ranged from 1.9 %-3.7 %, ischaemic heart disease from 0.4 %-6.5 %, diseases of oesophagus, stomach and duodenum from 5.3 %-9.0 % and arthroses from 4.7 %-6.8 % in three years in question.