Erythrocyte morphology and fatigue levels in podologists

ABSTRACT

Aesthetic and clinical care of the feet includes reducing nail thickness and removing calluses which are perfomed by high-speed nail drill machines. These micromotors diffuse skin material, nail dust, and pathogenic fungi into the air, some of which are then inhaled and causes an occupational risk to workers. This study examines occupational risks of inhaling organic dust in the working environment of Podologists (PDL) through their erythrocyte morphologies. Chalder Fatigue Scale was used to determine fatigue symptoms of the participants related to occupational exposures. 25 PDL and 26 control subjects were compared. Peripheral smear technique was used to identify erythrocyte morphologies. The results demonstrated that physical, mental, total fatigue levels, and erythrocyte anomaly amounts of the individuals in the PDL group were higher (p < .05). Findings also revealed that fatigue effectively formed Hypochromic, Stomatocytes, Dacrocytes, Elliptocytes, Spherocytes, and Ovalocytes. This study aims to increase awareness of podologists’ occupational risks..

KEYWORDS:

• Erythrocyte
• cellular anomaly
• occupational health
• organic powder
• podologists

Acknowledgement

Thanks to all PDL and control group subjects who volunteered to participate.

Compliance with ethical standards

The Ethics Committee of Kocaeli University approved this study.

Consent to participate

All participants volunteered to participate in the study and signed consent forms.

Consent to publish

All authors agreed to publish their manuscript in this journal and gave consent to publish.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.