Work-Related Musculoskeletal Complaints Among Male Retail Butchers: Multisite Pain, Upper-Extremity Disability and Burnout

Background/Objectives: Butchering combines repetitive forceful knife work, sustained standing and heavy manual handling, yet data on musculoskeletal complaints in this trade are scarce. We examined the seven-day prevalence of musculoskeletal pain in male retail butchers and the factors associated with multisite pain and upper-extremity disability. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 99 of 112 male butchers affiliated with the Istanbul Chamber of Retail Butchers (participation 88.4%) completed a sociodemographic form, the Standardised Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (seven-day recall), the QuickDASH and the Maslach Burnout Inventory in face-to-face interviews. Multisite pain was defined a priori as pain in three or more of nine regions. Given marked group imbalance, it was modelled with Firth penalised logistic and Poisson regression; QuickDASH with linear regression. Results: Mean age was 38.69 ± 7.53 years; mean experience 16.10 ± 7.36 years. Pain was most frequent in the upper back (66.7%), shoulders (63.6%) and hand/wrist (59.6%); 88.9% (95% CI 81.2–93.7) reported three or more painful regions. Age was the only variable independently associated with multisite pain (OR 1.17, 95% CI 1.05–1.30) and with region count (IRR 1.022, 95% CI 1.010–1.036). No statistically significant association was detected between any burnout dimension and any outcome, but the confidence intervals were wide (e.g., emotional exhaustion, OR 0.73 per SD, 95% CI 0.39–1.39) and small to moderate effects cannot be excluded. Conclusions: Multisite pain burden was very high and increased with age, which in this sample cannot be separated from cumulative occupational exposure. The findings highlight the potential importance of physical and ergonomic exposures; because only burnout was measured, no conclusion can be drawn about psychosocial factors more broadly. Findings are exploratory.