Prevalence and risk factors for work-related musculoskeletal pain among flight attendants: A comparative study.
Deborah Alperovitch-Najenson, Tamar Novoplansky, Yael Chen Kahanov and 5 others
Flight attendants' upper-limb pain dropped markedly between 2016 and 2024, but neck and lower-back pain stayed high.
Stress, workload, and low job satisfaction were linked to pain in both years. The drop coincided with industry equipment updates.
Key findings
1Hand pain fell from 53% to 33.7% and arm pain from 33.3% to 13.3% between 2016 and 2024, while lower back pain remained at 72%, well above the 38% general-population rate.
2In the 2024 cohort, stress raised the odds of neck pain (OR = 2.45), workload raised the odds of hand pain (OR = 1.73), and perceived effort raised the odds of finger pain (OR = 3.29).
3Prolonged standing increased the odds of elbow pain (OR = 3.68) and loading food into ovens increased the odds of hand pain (OR = 2.96).
Still to come
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What it does not show
Cross-sectional design: two different groups of people surveyed eight years apart, so no causal link between any risk factor and pain can be drawn. Self-reported questionnaires: pain severity and task exposure rely on memory and perception, with no clinical examination or objective measurement. Sample limited to Israeli flight attendants from specific airlines; airline policies, routes, and fleet mixes differ worldwide, so the findings may not transfer. Small samples (94 and 89) mean some body-region analyses, especially for less common risk factors, were underpowered. The 2024 wave was collected during a period of missile attacks and sirens. Threat exposure was not measured, so fear and urgency may have inflated pain reports or altered task performance in ways that cannot be separated from the equipment changes.
Declared interests
The authors received no financial support and declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the drop in hand and arm pain as proof that newer aircraft equipment prevents injury. The two groups are different people surveyed eight years apart, the paper itself notes the data do not directly measure the equipment changes, and the 2024 wave was collected during missile attacks that were not accounted for in the analysis.
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 →