Dear reader,
I appreciate your interest in our manuscript “Epidemiology of Work-Related Neck Pain Among Spine Surgeons,” published in GSJ. 1 First of all, we have to congratulate you and your team on your recently published manuscript in Acta Neurochir. 2 We have read your letter to the editor, and as a response to it, please see the following points below:
1. Your suggestion to include surgical operation types beyond the scope of spine surgery was great, as those may have influenced the overall results. However, this was different from the aim of the study. Our objective was to investigate the possible association between neck pain and job specialty (orthopedic surgery vs neurosurgery), among other factors.
2. We do agree that the finding in your study, that surgeons doing >300 operations per year reported significantly (86%) lower prevalence of WMSDs than those doing 100-300 (96%), could be explained by the level of experience associated with the workload. This explanation was mentioned in our study, as you stated. However, if you had adjusted for possible confounders had been made, there would have been no significant association between the surgical workload and the prevalence of WMSDs.
ORCID iDs
Sameh M. Abolfotouh https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9588-5101
Mostafa A. Abolfotouh https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3787-429X
References
- 1.Abolfotouh SM, Alnori O, Choma T, Moore D, Abolfotouh MA. Epidemiology of work-Related neck pain among spine surgeons. Global Spine J. 2022;23:219256822211486. doi: 10.1177/21925682221148685 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Mavrovounis G, Meling TR, Lafuente J, Fountas KN, Demetriades AK. Postural ergonomics and work-related musculoskeletal disorders in neurosurgery: Lessons from an international survey. Acta Neurochir. 2021;163(6):1541-1552. doi: 10.1007/s00701-021-04722-5 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]