Open AccessSystematic Literature Review of Adverse Reproductive Outcomes Associated with Physiotherapists' Occupational Exposures to Non‐ionising Radiation
Author(s) -
Shah Syed Ghulam Sarwar,
Farrow Alexandra
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of occupational health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 59
ISSN - 1348-9585
DOI - 10.1539/joh.13-0196-ra
Subject(s) - medicine , cinahl , medline , adverse effect , pregnancy , systematic review , occupational exposure , offspring , meta analysis , physical therapy , environmental health , psychological intervention , nursing , biology , political science , law , genetics
Systematic Literature Review of Adverse Reproductive Outcomes Associated with Physiotherapists' Occupational Exposures to Non‐ionising Radiation: Syed Ghulam Sarwar SHAH, et al . School of Health Sciences and Social Care, Brunel University London, UK—Objectives To review empirical research on adverse health and pregnancy outcomes associated with physiotherapists' occupational exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF EMFs) from shortwave (SWD) and microwave (MWD) diathermy devices. Methods A systematic review of peer reviewed literature published from 1990 to 2010 in the English language searched in eight online bibliographic databases: CINAHL, EBSCOhost, ISI Web of Knowledge, Medline, OSH UPDATE, PubMed Central, Science Direct, and Scopus. Results Findings suggest that physiotherapists' occupational exposure to SWD was statistically significantly associated with delayed time to pregnancy (>6 months), still birth, altered gender ratio (low ratio of boys to girls), congenital malformations and low birth weight (<2,500 g) among physiotherapists' offspring. Physiotherapists' exposure to MWD was also found to be statistically significantly associated with spontaneous abortion. However, causal mechanisms for these statistical associations are unknown. The present systematic review has found these adverse reproductive outcomes and health effects associations with RF EMFs from therapeutic diathermy devices to be inconsistent. Conclusions A number of studies did not find statistically significant results to replicate associations with such adverse outcomes, and therefore further research, preferably prospective studies of cohorts of physiotherapists, is warranted.