WORK FROM HOME? Beware of these Bone and Muscle Issues

Working from home became a new norm during COVID-19 pandemic. We sat with Dr Kirti Mohan Marya, a respected orthopedic surgeon in Dubai, to learn what are the emerging issues associated with working from home and ways to keep our bones and muscles healthy.

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Dr. Kirti Mohan Marya

Group Medical Director & Specialist Orthopedic Surgeon
Life Medical Centre, Circle Mall, JVC

What are common orthopedic issues during COVID-19?

Recently, we have already started with teleconsultations and we are also allowing some patients to physically visit us. I see a lot of such patients coming to us nowadays are complaining about neck and back pain issues more than what they experienced while they were at physical workplace. They are sitting in positions or on chairs which they are not used to. In the office you have ergonomic chairs but at home you might not have the same kind of chair that you are used to before. Also, you know when you are at home you are more relaxed, you are trying to sit on the sofa or on the bed or on the couch and trying to work around. With those postures, which probably add on to the problems about both the neck and back pain. So, in the number of cases, recently the neck and back pain issues are actually on the rise.

What is your advice to those working from home?

What I suggest to the patients basically is to take care of a few things. The first thing would be that, whenever they are sitting, or watching, doing their work on their laptop or their computers, it is very very important to take care of their posture. They should ideally sit on some kind of chair which is a little bit more firm at the base and at the back. They could probably use some kind of a cushion to support their lower back, so it’s very important that the lower back, which is where the waist is should always be supported behind with the chair or with the back rest of the sofa or bed in which they are sitting in, but ideally it should be a firm upright chair. An upright position is one of the most important key things.

The second thing I suggest to most of my patients is to not sit in one posture for a long period of time. When you sit in one position for a prolonged period, the muscles get tired and they start to hurt, so it’s a good idea to just get up from wherever you are sitting every half an hour, just walk around the house, take 10 to 15 steps, stretch a bit and sit down again.

The third thing is while they are not sitting and not working, as I said in the beginning, it is the posture which is important, so they should not do a semi-reclined kind of a posture to watch their phones or watch videos and TV. They should be sitting upright and also do a little bit of exercise, some kind of stretches, you know on a daily basis.

What are common injuries during COVID-19?

Some nasty incidents that are coming across. In the beginning, the first few days after the lockdown when I started to attend my clinic, the majority of patients would come back with some foot fracture or something. The common reason would be that "the laptop fell down on my foot" or "I was working out with a simple dumbbell that fell own on my foot", or "I was walking around the house and my foot hurt because I was walking in closed spaces, my foot hit the edge of the sofa or bed", so these kind of minor trauma, I would not say they are major injuries, but those kind of trips and falls, those kind of incidents were coming. 

Is COVID-19, a perfect time to get orthopedic surgeries?

So we had couple of requests from patients who wanted to get their surgeries which were planned before but then we had to postpone them because of the situation of COVID-19. They insisted that because they were on a holiday anyways, or they are working from home, or they are not required temporarily from the office. They were asking us to perform those surgeries now but we have deferring those surgeries as per the regulations here in Dubai which is more sensible as well because the hospitals need to have their beds available for the COVID-19 patients which is more of a priority right now.

The second thing is that yes we are doing emergency surgeries, suppose for example a patient has a severe fracture or serious kind of an injury that requires it to be fixed. We do allow them to have that surgeries done, but those which are elective cases like a meniscal tear or sports related injuries which are not causing the patient a lot of discomfort or agony, we are persuading them to postpone that for some time although it is convenient for them from the work-from-home point of view but it is a kind of a risk as well because when we are using anesthesia services in the theater, worldwide the data suggests that there could be a risk to the patient as well as the surgeon who is performing the surgery when you are doing this in these days especially with the COVID-19 around us. So it is better to just postpone that until the situation improves.

*Disclaimer: Please consider the information in this video/article most recent as per date and medical recommendations towards COVID-19 may change as the situation evolves.