Lost productivity among military personnel with cardiovascular disease

Teamwork Competencies and Their Influence on Health Literacy and Other Health Variables

The ability to work in a team is a skill of special relevance for multiple facets of life, increasing performance and optimizing the process in any task. This work aimed to study whether teamwork skills were related to different health variables. The sample consisted of 671 military personnel from the Spanish Army. The instrument is composed of the Health Literacy Questionnaire-the Teamwork Skills Questionnaire, and Rosenberg's self-esteem scale. The study concludes that the level of teamwork skills of the military is high, as well as their level of health literacy and their self-perception of health. However, their self-esteem is medium. Teamwork competencies are positively associated with a higher level of health literacy, with a high self-perception of their health, with the level of physical activity and negatively with self-esteem and the number of hospital admissions.

Body Composition Symmetry in Aircraft Pilots

The purpose of this study was to analyze the body composition symmetry in upper and lower body segments of aircrafts pilots. To reach the study aim, body composition in upper and lower body segments of 206 male aircraft pilots of the Spanish Army (23.1 ± 6.87 years) and 105 civilians (24.0 ± 6.29 years) were evaluated by a bioimpedance analyser (InBody 720, Biospace Co. Ltd., Seoul, Korea). Aircraft pilots presented a tendency to dysmetria in upper and lower body segments, showing fitter values in the protagonist side when performing flight functions. Dysmetria could be detrimental during flight manoeuvres and produce injuries in aircraft pilots. It would be recommended to design specific training protocols to improve this imbalance.

Paid and unpaid work productivity loss associated with treated hypertension in Southern Ethiopia: a patient-level analysis

Objective

Hypertension-related illness increases healthcare expenditure and reduces productivity. There is inadequate information about work productivity loss associated with hypertension in Ethiopia. This study was conducted to determine the extent of paid and unpaid worker productivity loss among adult hypertensive patients in Southern Ethiopia. Facility-based descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted by using the valuation of lost productivity (VOLP) tool adapted to the Ethiopian context. The data entry and analysis were done by using Microsoft Excel 2013 and SPSS version 21.0.

Key findings

A total of 301 adult hypertensive patients on regular follow-up at selected public hospitals were included in this study. One hundred ninety-five patients were females with a mean age of 50.7 ± 7.3 years. Less than one in five 39 (13.0%) of patients achieved their BP control target. Fifty-three (17.7%) of patients reported that hypertension reduced their work performance by 50%. One hundred twenty-five (60.1%) patients reported that they would complete the same work in less time, if they have no health problem. After adjusting for team impact and work substitutability, 3247.4 USD and 1844.81 USD were lost per month from paid and unpaid work. Overall annual work productivity loss was 38 968.4 USD, and the percentage of lost productivity per month was 18.7%.

Summary

Hypertension reduced the work productivity of adults by one-fifth. Therefore, it is important to devise strategies by involving all relevant stakeholders for preventing hypertension to save this productivity loss. In addition to this, improving the blood pressure control rate could help to reduce associated productivity loss.

Assessment of risk factors for coronary artery disease in military personnel: A study from Iran

Introduction:

Cardiovascular diseases are the most significant cause of mortality. Although the risk factors of this disease are well known, the strength of these factors varies in different populations and needs to be investigated.

Aim:

The aim of this study is to estimate the amount of the effect of each classic risk factor on CAD (coronary artery disease) among Aja personnel.

Materials and Methods:

This matched case-control study was conducted on 1000 male Aja personnel admitted selecting Aja hospitals in Tehran in 2017. The samples were selected using purposive-graded sampling method. The 250 military patients hospitalized for CAD were considered as a case group. Each case was individually matched for age and service force with tree military patients without CAD. Data were gathered using standard demographic information and history of risk factors questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS 23 and statistical tests. Odds ratio measured trough Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel test and used to estimate the amount of the effect of each classic risk factors on CAD.

Results:

Data analysis indicated that the risk factors including diabetes, hyperlipidemia, smoking, hypertension, and positive family history of CAD enhance the probability of CAD as much as 79.2%, 77.3%, 67.7%, 64.1%, and 56.6%, respectively.

Conclusion:

Diabetes and other modifiable risk factors have the greatest impact on CAD among the concerned Aja personnel. Hence, the authorities can consider the independent amount of the effect of each risk factor and modify them in order to prevent the disease more effectively and purposefully among the personnel.