Musica

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

BioMed Central

Open Access

Research article

A high prevalence of cumulative trauma disorders in Iranian
instrumentalists
Shahram Sadeghi*1, Behrooz Kazemi2, Seyed Mostafa Jazayeri Shooshtari2,
Ali Bidari3 and Peyman Jafari4
Address: 1Pain research group, academic centre for education, culture and research, Iran medical science branch. No 31, Karimkhanzand Avenue,
shahid hosseini alley, multidisciplinary pain clinic. Tehran, Iran, 2Department of physical medicine and rehabilitation, Shiraz medical school,
Shiraz, Iran, 3Emergency department, Hazrat-e-rasoul medical complex. Iran university of medical sciences, Tehran, Iran and 4department of
biostatistics, Shiraz medical school, Shiraz, Iran
Email: Shahram Sadeghi* - shsadeghi@sums.ac.ir;Behrooz Kazemi - behroozkazemishiraz@yahoo.com; Seyed Mostafa
Jazayeri Shooshtari - jazayeri1335@yahoo.com; Ali Bidari - ali_bidari@hotmail.com; Peyman Jafari - PJBIOSTAT@YAHOO.CO.UK
* Corresponding author

Published: 14 October 2004
BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 2004, 5:35

doi:10.1186/1471-2474-5-35

Received: 05 May 2004
Accepted: 14 October 2004

This article is available from:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2474/5/35
© 2004 Sadeghi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract
Background:Cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs) are common in musicians and their
prevalence has been the subject of a number of studies in most western countries. Such studies are
scarce in developing countries despite the possibility that CTDs may have a different prevalence in
these countries, especially when considering traditional musical instruments and different methods
of playing. Although not formallystudied before, according to our experience the prevalence of
CTDs seemed to be high among Iranian instrumentalists.
We proposed this study to determine the prevalence of CTDs in amateur music students playing
one of the two traditional Iranian instruments: Daf and Setar.
Methods: In a prospective cross sectional study, we interviewed and examined the students of
three music training centers inIran. Seventy eight instrumentalists, who were playing Daf or Setar
and twelve students who had not started playing yet were regarded as case and control groups
respectively. Some of them also underwent electrodiagnostic studies.
Results: Forty-seven percent (17 of 36) of the Setar players and 57% (24 of 42) of the Daf players
and fifty-three percent (41 of 78) of the instrumentalists as awhole had CTDs. None of them had
carpal tunnel syndrome.
Conclusions: Our study revealed that the prevalence of CTDs in Iranian instrumentalists was
unusually high. In addition to age, other variables may be contributory. This needs to be further
studied.

Background
Cumulative trauma disorders, also called repetitive stress
injuries, overuse syndromes or repetitive motion injuries
[1-3]are common in musicians [4,5] and are caused by

repetitive motions. Nerve entrapments, stress fractures,
tendonitis, bursitis and muscle strains have been labeled
in this category [1,5].

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Figure 1
teachers) showing of playing technique for DafBijan Kamkar (one thethe most famous Iranian Daf players/
Bijan Kamkar (one of the most famous Iranian Daf players/
teachers) showing the playing technique for Daf. With thanks
to Hana Kamkar (photographer).

To date no study has been performed about the prevalence of cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs) in players of
Iranian instruments. According to our experience, it
seemed to be...