Preliminary Study on the Evaluation of Musculoskeletal Risks through Infrared Thermography for Drummers

Playing the drums requires effort, speed and highly repetitive movements. Drummers are constantly exposed to maintain uncomfortable and unhealthy postures by long periods of time, which increases the risk of musculoskeletal injuries. A professional drummer performs from three to 6 hours daily to achieve high performance levels. Because of that, they constantly suffer discomfort and lower back pain. The purpose of this work is to develop a protocol to monitor skin temperature in a professional drummer, the study was performed by monitoring the temperature on skin surface at the lower back, using infrared thermography as noninvasive method for collecting the data of the surface temperature in the human body. It is intended to use these data to assess musculoskeletal risks of injuries. A professional drummer was subjected to an acclimation period of 5 minutes in a musical studio. After the acclimation period, the first thermal image is captured. Thermal images of the lower back of the drummer were captured every 15 minutes of practice for three periods. After the analysis of thermal images it can be observed the variations of temperature in the lower back of the drummer. There are few studies in the literature regarding the use of infrared thermography to monitor the temperature of the drummers. The data obtained in this study may be useful for the design and development of new products and workstations for drummers to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal injury.