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We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com. Back to Healio Key takeaways: Musculoskeletal pain and injuries are common among ophthalmologists. Office layout, exercise and equipment all can improve physician ergonomics. For ophthalmologists, occupational pain can start early. For Cynthia Matossian, MD, FACS, discomfort arose fewer than 5 years into her career. She said surgeons often find themselves in similar positions over the course of their routine work, and repeated motions can wear people down.
Image:
Courtesy of
Sunir
J. Garg, MD, FACS, FASRS
\u201cThere were two areas that I noticed were bothering me after being hunched over the slit lamp day in, day out, week in, week out, and after being in the OR for long days of surgery,\u201d she said. \u201cThose two areas were my neck and upper back area around my shoulder blades.\u201d The discomfort got so bad that she knew if she did not address it, it could have a significant impact on her career. \u201cI told myself, \u2018I can\u2019t go on like this,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI need to help my body so that I can be an effective and healthy ophthalmologist for as long as possible.\u201d Musculoskeletal pain and injuries are common among ophthalmologists. A 2025 literature review that included data from more than 3,200 ophthalmologists found that the average prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders was about 63%, with neck, lower back and shoulder disorders most affected. The authors also found that more than 7% of ophthalmologists require spine surgery because of cervical spine disease related to disc herniation. Additionally, these disorders push about 13% of ophthalmologists to early retirement, according to the study. Cynthia Matossian When Matossian looked for solutions for her discomfort about 30 years ago, there was not much to work with because not many people talked about the problem, she said. \u201cI started to do some research about it, and ergonomics was not a common topic back in the day,\u201d she said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t discussed, it wasn\u2019t talked about, and you just slouched over and did what you had to do to examine patients. Nobody paid attention to this area.\u201d Deepinder K. Dhaliwal, MD, LAc, said ergonomic problems trace back to the physician\u2019s mindset to put the patient and their comfort first. \u201cWe tell ourselves that the patient has to be comfortable, and we\u2019ll withstand an uncomfortable position,\u201d she said. \u201cThe problem is that because we do so many exams and so many surgeries in a career, all that poor posture and habits come back to haunt us.\u201d Matossian agreed, saying physicians are taught to push through tough times, exhaustion and pain. \u201cYou\u2019re sleepless, but you get through the night,\u201d she said. \u201cWe just try to tough it out and power through whatever aches and pains we may be having. These are signs of your body telling you that it is not happy, and perhaps there are simple adjustments that can be made to alleviate those issues completely if you pay attention to them.\u201d The early career experience of Eric D. Rosenberg, DO, was no different. When he started his internship, his first goals were not to hurt anyone else and to help patients. \u201cFrom day 1 coming out the gate, we\u2019re always inclined to take care of the person in front of us, never ourselves,\u201d he said. \u201cWe frequently do it at the cost of ourselves. We don\u2019t care about ourselves because we\u2019ve been trained not to care about ourselves. All aspects of our lives have been trained and geared toward making sure that the people around us are better off than we are.\u201d Common Mistakes When Dhaliwal works with young physicians, there are a few ergonomic issues that she spots right away, including their posture at the slit lamp, which was an issue early in her career. \u201cI used to crane my neck forward, and it\u2019s such a common thing that I see people do because they try to reach the patient,\u201d she said. \u201cThe critical thing I do now is lift the patient\u2019s chair up and slide my stool under the footrest so I can get close. I have the patient move to the edge of their seat so that they are leaning forward into the slit lamp, and I can keep my spine and neck straight. That has changed my life.\u201d Dhaliwal said her goal is to keep her ears over her shoulders and ensure she is properly supporting her head when she is examining patients. \u201cThe typical head weighs 10 to 12 pounds, but if we flex forward 30\u00b0, which is not a lot, that effective weight on our cervical spine is 40 pounds\u201d she said. \u201cYou can understand why even when you\u2019re looking down at your phone for a long time, your neck can start to feel uncomfortable.\u201d Sunir J. Garg, MD, FACS, FASRS, said a lot of ergonomic mistakes are caused by environmental factors, including a poor office setup. \u201cOur profession, including our equipment, is set up for everything besides our ergonomic benefit,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you walk into one of my exam rooms, I have the computer parallel to the wall on one side, and I have the patient chair at 90\u00b0 in front of me; that setup is ergonomically not good. I\u2019m trying to type while I rotate and turn my head toward the patient, which causes unnecessary stress on our neck and our back. That twisting motion is bad for a person\u2019s spine.\u201d Garg said common slit lamp setups are wrong as well. The tables are often too deep, and patient seats are too deep, causing ophthalmologists to sit too far away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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