Castaneda LAG, Baquero WAH, Araujo WGG, Isaza SJ and Olaya AFR
Background: Into literary collections exists a great availability of kinematic models for upper limbs; e.g. for shoulder modeling, were found that the number of published articles, since 1990 to 2009, can reach 100. Aims: To describe the main ergonomic methods adopted to evaluate the upper limb in manual agricultural work and the quality of available evidence in electronic databases. Methods: A search in scientific literature made through Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, ESBCO - PubMed and IEEE databases. At the same time, in systematically classified and published articles during the period 2013 to 2018, based on Delphi consensus criteria and evidences analyzed under PRISMA declaration criteria and catalogued in accordance with the approaches of physical ergonomics. Papers selection had basis on the key words: farmers, musculoskeletal, farmers' upper limb, agricultural risk factor, and occupational risk factor. Along this retrospective study, initially were found 1508 articles, where 37 of them were analyzed. All selected papers met rigor of inclusion criteria (specific farmer population without mechanical aid), and exclusion (duplicity or triplicate in databases, and intervention with clinical or medical examinations). Conclusion: Results showed that the most of evaluation techniques used are indirect: realized by self-administered questionnaires (SAQ) or self-reporting, this is an evidence of little ergonomic analysis in farmers doing manual work; most of the studies selected were catalogued as good or reasonable quality. This systematic review highlights the needing of adjusting tools in order to identify and evaluate potentially dangerous tasks by their movements and/or postures in real time.
