THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 18, 1996 TAG: 9604180388
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
The Internal Revenue Service's April 15 deadline bore down on the Norfolk accounting firm of Craver, Green and Co., but the nerves of the accountants working there withstood the pounding.
The nerves in their arms, that is. And the pounding on computer keyboards.
Virginia Beach physical therapist Jim Richard tested seven workers at Craver, Green accountants in January for carpal tunnel syndrome. Carpal tunnel is a repetitive-motion injury that inflames the tendons in a person's lower arm. Those swollen tendons eventually squeeze the nerves, causing pain, numbness and restricted movement.
Richard conducted follow-up testing Wednesday and found that the nerves in the workers' hands had stayed the same and, in many cases, improved - even with the heavy hours the employees had put in during tax season.
``My expectation was that it would get worse,'' Richard said. ``But what this shows is they're set up for the work they're doing. Even in their worst circumstances, it's not bothering them much.''
Accountant Philip Purrington's January test showed him to be a borderline case. His nerve sensitivity was within normal limits, but at the lower end. Despite working 55-hour weeks during tax season, Purrington's follow-up test showed no serious worsening.
``The only time I feel pain in my hands is during bike riding and sailing,'' Purrington said. ``But I'm pretty hard on my hands.''
Carpal tunnel syndrome has come to the forefront of workers' compensation debates in state legislatures. The Virginia General Assembly considered bills during its two previous sessions, but neither was signed into law.
The affliction most frequently appears in assembly-line workers who perform one task repeatedly and among groups like financial service employees who type all day on computer keyboards.
Manufacturing workers show an incidence of 10.4 cases of carpal tunnel per 10,000 workers; financial services employees have an occurrence rate of 4.4 cases per 10,000, according to the most recent numbers available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Carpal tunnel's biggest impact might be on the time lost from work: 47.5 percent of those with the problem missed more than 31 days of work in 1993, the BLS reported.
Richard's testing method is new. It is similar to hearing tests, which use electrical impulses.
In the carpal tunnel test, Richard hooks up a laptop computer to a vibrometer that sends a 50 hertz vibration to a spot under the person's finger. If the person feels the impulse, he presses a button.
The first symptoms of carpal tunnel usually are pain or numbness in the hand, especially the index finger, middle finger and thumb. Bad cases sometimes prevent the person from grasping something in his hand. So it would be difficult for an afflicted person to sense the impulse.
Richard thinks people with carpal tunnel syndrome often get its symptoms after it is too late to treat the condition with simple medication. The goal of his testing is to catch the problem before it becomes serious - in other words, before surgery is needed.
The cost of the testing for a company is $20 per person. For individuals, testing costs $40. A company could recover the cost of testing its employees, because outfits selling ergonomic equipment like wrist-rests often take advantage of the unknown, Richard said.
``Somebody might come up to you tomorrow and say, `You're a group of accountants using computers a lot, buy some of these wrist-rests,' '' he said. ``If your staff had been tested and you knew where the problems were, you could save a lot of money.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
LAWRENCE JACKSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Philip Purrington, an accountant at Craver, Green and Co., gets
tested for carpal tunnel syndrome. In the test, a vibrometer ends a
50 hertz vibration to a spot under a person's finger to tst
sensitivity.
KEYWORDS: WORKPLACE CARPEL TUNNEL SYNDROME by CNB