Dupuytren’s Disease in Relation to the Exposure to Hand-Transmitted Vibration: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

This systematic review covering publications in the Medline and Embase databases for the period 1946 to 2020 revealed a higher prevalence of Dupuytren’s disease among men exposed to vibration compared to men not exposed to vibration. The risk assessment, also considering the risk of bias, corresponded to a roughly doubled risk of Dupuytren’s disease when working with vibrating machines. The supplementary meta-analysis confirmed a more than doubled risk. A possible exposure–response relation was supported by the result from the meta-analysis, which showed a doubled risk for high exposure relative to low exposure.

Keywords

• Dupuytren’s disease
• hand–arm vibration
• systematic review
• meta-analysis
• vibration injury