g., dermatologist, internist, physiatrist and oncologist), (2) musculoskeletal, (3) prevalence, incidence, and (4) medical center, hospital. To avoid many studies about patients, the key word patient was used in the search as a limitation. Subsequently, the reference results were examined for additional studies. One reviewer (KOH) screened

the obtained titles and abstracts for eligibility. Studies were eligible when all the inclusion criteria were met. When inclusion or exclusion could not be made on the title or abstract, the full article was retrieved to decide of the article was eligible for the review. MK-8931 research buy Inclusion criteria Given the large number of papers, the first reviewer (KOH) narrowed the selection of the papers used by applying the following inclusion criteria: musculoskeletal complaints were defined as musculoskeletal complaints, musculoskeletal symptoms or musculoskeletal disorders. the study should be published in English. the study was published between January 1990 and January 2010. Methodological quality assessment All the articles were selected on the basis of

six inclusion criteria: (1) positive when a description and clarification was given for a disorder or disease; (2) description of the setting and location of the hospital (e.g. city of the hospital, type of hospital, size of hospital); (3) description of the physicians; 4SC-202 (4) and (5) description of the instruments and statistics; (6) positive when the response rate was BCKDHA at least 50%. These criteria were selected as important to make a proper comparison between the papers and the population. Studies were classified as high (5–6 criteria), medium (3–4 criteria) or low quality (1–2 criteria). Low-quality studies were excluded from this systematic

review. Results Study selection The computer-generated search resulted in 160 references in Pubmed and 157 references in EMBASE. After exclusion of the duplicated references, all titles and abstracts were checked for inclusion or exclusion. The most important reasons for exclusion were: (1) the study did not distinguish between health care workers in their study and (2) the study was reporting the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among www.selleckchem.com/products/CP-673451.html patients instead of physicians. After selection based on the title and on the abstract, 13 articles were selected. After reviewing the whole paper, a total of five articles were included. Screening the reference list of the included articles provided an extra three studies. Finally, a total of eight studies were selected for this review (Fig. 1). Fig. 1 Flowchart of selection process Methodological quality assessment Table 1 showed the methodological quality assessment of the eight studies (Berguer et al. 1999; Cunningham et al. 2006; Failde et al. 2000; Johnston et al. 2005; Karahan et al. 2009; Smith et al. 2006; Szeto et al. 2009; Wolf et al. 2000). Five medium-quality studies (Berguer et al. 1999; Failde et al. 2000; Johnston et al. 2005; Karahan et al. 2009; Wolf et al.