Journal of occupational medicine. : official publication of the Industrial Medical Association
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This article describes the growth and cost benefits of an on-site industrial physical therapy program. The program was initiated in 1982 at one of five plants managed by a major corporation to help reduce the costs of musculoskeletal injury. ⋯ Now in its tenth year, the program has produced calculated savings of $8.3 million, a benefit-to-cost ratio of greater than 9 to 1. The physical therapy program now serves approximately 50% of the company's employees and provides technical assistance in solving other work-related problems.
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Our purpose was to test the hypothesis that feigned exertions would show greater variability in both force and electromyograms than would sincere exertions over repeated testing sessions. Eleven normal subjects made sincere and feigned exertions while performing the five-handle position Jamar grip test. The subjects were tested 6 times in a 3- to 5-week period. ⋯ Both sincere and feigned exertions were highly consistent over the six sessions. However, the sincere and feigned exertions did differ in the patterns of force and electromyogram on the five-handle position test. These results and those of previous studies suggest that clinicians should use more than one type of test when testing suspected malingerers.
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This overview will discuss a number of the issues posed by the challenge of international environmental health. The reasons that environmental problems occurring elsewhere in the world are of importance to occupational and environmental physicians in North America include the interconnectedness of the biosphere of our planet so that environmental alterations in one part of the globe can have an adverse outcome on our health and well-being; the often high levels of pollution and environmental degradation elsewhere provide an opportunity to determine and predict adverse consequences of environmental agents pertinent to protecting our own health; and, most importantly, our own ability to provide assistance in helping economic development occur in a setting of low risk of environmental pollution.