Objective This cross sectional study was conducted to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among government dental personnels in Khon Kaen Province of Thailand.

Methods There were 282 dental personnels enrolled into this study. Data were collected by interviews with the modified structural questionnaires. Descriptive statistics were used to describe characteristics and inferential statistics were MSDs prevalence and confidence interval (95%CI).

Results The results showed that most participants were female (81.9%), the minimum and maximum age were 20 years and 59 years, respectively (mean = 32.8 ± 9.4 years). Most participants had body mass index at normal level (18.5 - 22.9 kg/m²) for 55.3%. Most positions were dental nurses (46.4%), dentists (22.0%) and patient assistants (18.1%), respectively.

For the last 7-day and 1 month period, the prevalence of MSDs were 57.8% (95% CI = 0.52 - 0.64) and 93.6% (95% CI = 0.91 - 0.96), respectively. The highest prevalence at severe level of pain were found at areas of shoulder (23.0%), lower back (18.1%), and neck (15.6%), respectively. Frequency of MSDs concidering everyday accurence found on areas of neck (12.8%), lower back (7.1%), shoulder (6.4%) and upper back (6.4%), respectively. Among 264 MSDs cases of dental personnels, the report of pain impacted to daily activity was 76.1%. The report of work was related-MSDs was 71.2%. Symptoms was occured at evening time after work ( 41.3%). The intake of painkillers or treatment by Thai traditional medicine program was 64.4%.

Conclusions The results identified neck-shoulder-back pain among dental personnels by showing the severity and the frequency of pain. Therefore there should be the health surveillance program of neck- shoulder- back pain among dental personnels. This findings are useful for the prospective cohortstudy to find out the risk factors for neck-shoulder-back pain among dental personnels.