Published Paper Details:

The Local Train commuters in Mumbai face a tremendous amount of crowd while travelling in rush hours of the day, which usually leads to many commuters standing for the entire duration of travel in a cramped space or sitting in awkward postures, for a long time that over a course of period inevitably leads to musculoskeletal pain in some form or another. Objective: To find the joints and areas involved most commonly in local train commuters using Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire and to have a gender biased discrimination on the joints involved. Methods: A cross sectional survey was conducted on 384 local train commuters in Mumbai. Dadar and Thane railway stations were targeted for recruitment of participants. Convenience sampling was used for the same. Both male and female participants above the age of 18, who had been travelling for more than a year and had a single travel route of an hour or more were included in the study. Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire was used to collect the data. Results: A total of 384 responses were collected from local train commuters, amongst which 60% were female and 40% were male participants. 86% commuters experienced pain while 14% did not. Neck was the most affected area (37%) while elbow was the least affected (2%). The gender biased study pointed towards females having more cases of pain in each involved joint. Conclusion: The present study indicates that 86% Mumbai local train commuters have experienced a degree of musculoskeletal pain from travelling.