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Ballenberger N.1, Zalpour C.1
1University of Applied Science of Osnabrueck, Osnabrueck, Germany
Background: Up to 80% of professional musicians suffer from playing-related health problems which begin during university. Health problems may be both of psychological and physical origin. However, many studies are based on cross-sectional study designs and, hence, present only prevalences instead of incidences. A further limitation of cross sectional studies, due to a lack of temporal association, is the inability to identify risk factors for playing-related health problems is impossible.
Purpose: The purpose of this prospective cohort study is to follow music students during their university training and track their psychological and physical health status. The incidence of playing related health problems during their university study is recorded. Furthermore, we seek to identify risk factors at the beginning of the music study by which playing related health problems may be predicted. Additionally, we compare the health status from music students to the health status from students of the same university from other disciplines.
Methods: Detailed measurements of physical and psychological health are undertaken. Standardized validated questionaires such as SF-36, SCI and KMPAI aiming to measure a persons perceived health status, stress symptoms, stress coping strategies and performance anxiety and a test battery is used to assess coordination, flexibility, motor control and sensitivity to pressure. The data is compared to a control group from other disciplines that are matched with respect to potential confounders such as age, gender and body composition. Measurements are taken annually. By emailing out online questionnaires including few items changes of health status and new episodes of playing related health problems are tracked monthly. Generalized linear mixed regression models are applied for data analysis.
Results: The first cohort consists of 28 music students and 28 control students from other disciplines. At the moment of abstract submissionthe first 11 months were completed and at least partly analyzed. 64 % of the music students and 44% of the control students experienced al least one episode of a physical playing related health problem which corresponds to a crude odds ratio of 2.25 and a confounder adjusted odds ratio of 5.01. As independent risk factors for physical playing related health problem we identified stress symptoms, pain history before university, female sex, being a musician and hours of night sleep. The predictive abilitiy of the model corresponds to an area under the curve of 0.78.
Conclusion(s): At this stage we found out that being a music student results in increased chance of experiencing physical playing related health problems and identified a set of risk factors. However, an Increase of the study sample is required for greater confidence. Furthermore the identified risk factors and the predictive ability of the model need to be confirmed and validated in independent study samples.
Implications: Due to the fact that at this time point only a small study sample has been followed for a small period of time no meaningful and serious implications can be drawn. However, by the time of the congress more data will be available in order to present more detailed results and , as a consequence, draw implications.
Funding acknowledgements: The project is funded by an internal grant of the university of applied science of Osnabrück.
Topic: Occupational health & ergonomics
Ethics approval: Ethical approvement was given by the ethical comitee of the university of applied science of Osnabrück
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
