A fuzzy linguistic model for the prediction of carpal tunnel syndrome risks in an occupational environment

    Authors

    P. M. Bell;L. Crumpton

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Ergonomics

    Keywords

    carpel tunnel; fuzzy; cumulative trauma; predictive model; Engineering, Industrial; Ergonomics; Psychology, Applied; Psychology

    Abstract

    This research presents the development and evaluation of a fuzzy linguistic model designated to predict the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) in an occupational setting. CTS has become one of the largest problems facing ergonomists and the medical community because it is developing in epidemic proportions within the occupational environment. In addition, practitioners are interested in identifying accurate methods for evaluating the risk of CTS in an occupational setting. It is hypothesized that many factors impact an individual's likelihood of developing CTS and the eventual development of CTS. This disparity in the occurrence of CTS for workers with similar backgrounds and work activities has confused researchers and has been a stumbling block in the development of a model for widespread use in evaluating the development of CTS. Thus this research is an attempt to develop a method that can be used to predict the likelihood of CTS risk in a variety of environments. The intent is that this model will be applied eventually in an occupational setting, thus model development was focused on a method that provided a usable interface and the desired system inputs can also be obtained without the benefit of a medical practitioner. The methodology involves knowledge acquisition to identify and categorize a holistic set of risk factors that include task-related, personal, and organizational categories. The determination of relative factor importance was accomplished using analytic hierarchy processing (AHP) analysis. Finally a mathematical representation of the CTS risk was accomplished by utilizing fuzzy set theory in order to quantify linguistic input parameters. An evaluation of the model including determination of sensitivity and specificity is conducted and the results of the model indicate that the results are fairly accurate and this method has the potential for widespread use. A significant aspect of this research is the comparison of this technique to other methods for assessing presence of CTS. The results of this evaluation technique are compared with more traditional methods for assessing the presence of CTS.

    Journal Title

    Ergonomics

    Volume

    40

    Issue/Number

    8

    Publication Date

    1-1-1997

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    790

    Last Page

    799

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:A1997WZ58700005

    ISSN

    0014-0139

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