Occupational burden in the line of duty: Focus on firefighter musculoskeletal injuries.
Bade Yamak, Muhammed Yildiz
The research field on firefighter musculoskeletal injuries has grown sharply since 2010 and is increasingly interdisciplinary, but this is a map of that literature, not a clinical study — it reports no patient outcomes and offers no new treatment guidance.
Key findings
1Publication output was low and predominantly descriptive or case-based between 1991 and 2007, then increased sharply after 2010, peaking in 2022 with the highest citation rates recorded in 2023.
2The keyword 'firefighters' sits at the centre of the conceptual network, tightly linked to 'occupational health,' 'injury prevention,' 'ergonomics,' 'musculoskeletal injury,' and 'exercise,' forming the thematic core around which other research clusters.
3The research spans multiple disciplines — sports sciences, public health, ergonomics, physiotherapy, and occupational health — with Joy C. MacDermid identified as the most central figure in the citation network.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only English-language publications indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection were included; non-English and region-specific research is excluded. Citation frequency is used as a proxy for influence, which does not necessarily reflect study quality or scientific consensus. This is a bibliometric map of the literature, not a clinical study. It reports no patient outcomes, no intervention effects, and no treatment recommendations. It cannot tell a clinician which assessment or rehabilitation approach is effective for a firefighter with a back or shoulder injury.
Declared interests
The authors received no financial support and declared no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the prominence of a keyword cluster or an author's centrality in the citation network as evidence that a particular assessment tool, exercise programme, or rehabilitation protocol is effective. This paper maps who published what and which terms appear together; it contains no patient data, no intervention comparison, and no outcome measure. A therapist looking for guidance on treating a firefighter's rotator cuff or lumbar injury will find nothing actionable here.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →