Screening of risk from patient manual handling with MAPO method.

International standards highlight the steps required by risk assessment and involving first hazard identification, then risk evaluation and finally, if necessary, risk assessment. To check approach appropriateness to "risk evaluation" from manual patient handling through MAPO, a cross study was carried out in view of checking relationship between this new risk assessment model and occurrence of acute low back pain. After proper training the MAPO screening method was assessed in 31 wards, 411 exposed subjects of geriatric hospitals. At the same time health data were collected on occurrence of low back pain episodes during the last year both in the exposed subjects' group and the external reference group (n�237). Risk and clinical assessment data were tutored and checked by EPM research unit. The logistic analysis was used as a method to evaluate the relationship between risk index and acute low back pain. Investigating relationship between acute low back pain episodes and levels of MAPO screening index, carried out only with the people exposed who claimed to work for at least 30 hours per week (n = 178), showed definitely positive trends. The study results indicate that MAPO screening may represent a useful tool to estimate the risk from manual handling patients.