Glove Use and the Relative Risk of Acute Hand Injury: A Case-Crossover Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between glove use and acute traumatic occupational hand injury. We used a case-crossover, within-subject study design to control for differences between individuals such as occupation, injury history, age, gender, risk-taking behavior, manual dexterity, and muscle strength. A total of 1166 hand-injured workers were interviewed regarding the use of gloves at the time of the injury. The self-reported average duration of glove use in the previous work month was the measure of expected exposure to wearing gloves. Nineteen percent of subjects reported wearing gloves at the time of the injury. The expected exposure to glove use in the past work month was 27.9%. Glove use was associated with a lower risk of lacerations and punctures but not crush, fractures, avulsions, amputations, dislocations; the risk of the former two injury types was estimated to be 60–70% lower while wearing gloves. Glove use is only one component of a comprehensive hand injury prevention approach that might include the identification and elimination of sharp hazards, engineering controls, safety warnings, training in high-risk situation awareness, and proper selection and timing of glove use.

Keywords:

• case-crossover
• epidemiology
• gloves
• hand
• injury

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful to Theodore Courtney and Fred Filiaggi for their review of an earlier draft of the manuscript, and to Patti Boelsen for her preparation of the manuscript.

We are indebted to the clinicians and staff of two sets of occupational health clinics in New England who helped recruit the majority of subjects in this study: Occupational Health + Rehabilitation (OH + R) and Industrial Health Care, Inc. (IHC), now known as Concentra. Linda Hirota provided technical assistance during the early development of the manuscript.

Funding was provided by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health through grant R01 OH-03763.

Notes

^A p-value based upon a two-sample t-test (age) or based upon chi-square or Fisher's exact test of independence of categorized variables according to subjects use or non-use of gloves at the time of the injury.

^B Data for one of 1166 subjects were missing for glove use. Total numbers do not add upto 1165 because some questions were added to a later version of the study questionnaire.

^C An avulsion injury is a tearing away of skin.

^A Percent of total work time for each individual reporting glove use in the month before the injury, ± standard error of the mean.

^B p-value for test of homogeneity across categories of occupation and injury type.

^C MMH = Manual material handling.

^D Includes nonfood services.

^E Includes fracture, amputation, contusion, and dislocation.