Upper extremity kinematics during the functional activities of a hair-blow-drying task Three-dimensional studies of professional hairdressers.

Abstract: For hairdressers, direct observation and sEMG studies have been widely used for the identification of risk factors associated with work-related upper limb disorder (WRULD). However, it is unknown what UE joint excursions are required to perform hair-blow-drying tasks since there have been no studies establishing a normative database of the 3D kinematic values of various hairdressing tasks. This study aims to examine the feasibility of 3D motion analysis for the study of the upper extremity (UE) kinematics during functional activities of the hair-blow-drying tasks, to make a contribution to the establishment of a normative database of 3D kinematic values during selected hair-blow-drying tasks and to enable future comparisons with pathologic movements. As a result, some of the composite graphs representing joint motions showed a small standard deviation at the beginning and end of the task. Thus, the same protocol is therefore recommended for implementation in various hairdressing tasks, such as hair-cutting and hair-perming. The next step is to propose and implement training intervention strategies for the functional improvement of various hairdressing tasks for these six professional hairdressers and to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies by comparisons with the recorded pathologic movements.

Keywords: Upper extremity; 3D motion analysis; hairdressers; Musculoskeletal disorders (MSD)