REF- funded Research Shows RA Patients Maintain Computer Skills
A study recently published in Arthritis Care & Research found that hand impairment experienced by many patients with rheumatoid arthritis did not significantly interfere with their computer use.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease that causes pain, swelling, and limitations in the motion and function of multiple joints. RA is the most common type of arthritis triggered by the immune system, and 1.3 million adult American have been diagnosed. While rheumatoid arthritis has long been feared as one of the most disabling types of arthritis, the outlook has dramatically improved for many newly diagnosed patients.
The number of workers using computers has greatly increased over the past 20 years and is expected to continue to grow. For workers with RA, the capacity to use computers may be limited by impairment in hand range of motion and strength caused by inflammation of their joints due to the disease. Prior studies have shown that workers with RA have higher rates of work disability, reduced hours on the job, and stop work sooner than workers without RA. To remain competitive in today's marketplace, workers must maintain computer skills, including typing and use of the mouse, both of which require coordinated hand actions.
Nancy Baker, ScD, MPH, ORT/L, a recent recipient of the ACR REF Health Professional Investigator Award —now the ACR REF Rheumatology Investigator Award—and her team set out to investigate this. "With more arthritic workers using computers, understanding the associations between hand function impairment and peripheral device—keyboard and mouse—limitations is essential and the focus of our study,” says Baker.
Because there's little objective data on possible loss of productivity because of hand involvement in rheumatoid arthritis, Baker and her team recruited 45 computer users with the disease from their university's Arthritis Network Research Registry. The study sought to discover which variables— impairments in range of motion, impairments in hand function, general activity limitations, or task-specific training, such as training in touch typing—explain the most difference in keyboard and mouse speeds in computer users with rheumatoid arthritis.
Keyboarding speeds were found to be comparable with workers without RA, suggesting that most of the arthritis patients could be competitive in the job market. On average, a group of patients with longstanding rheumatoid arthritis had only mild impairments on the Keitel Hand Function Index, which assesses active range of motion. The findings of this study suggest that if people with motor impairments can learn touch typing, it might increase their productivity.
"Clinicians may want to consider informing computer users with [rheumatoid arthritis] to take touch-typing training to improve performance," the investigators wrote. They recommended that the study be replicated including participants both with and without rheumatoid arthritis to more closely examine personal factors such as age.
