Repetitive strain injury

Repetitive strain injury or RSI, also called repetitive stress injury or typing injury, is an occupational overuse syndrome affecting muscles, tendons and nerves in the arms and upper back. RSI occurs when muscles in these areas are kept tense for very long periods of time, due to poor posture and/or repetitive motions.

Repetitive strain injury is most common among assembly line and computer workers. Good posture and ergonomic working conditions can help prevent RSI or halt the progress of the disorder; stretches, strengthening exercises, massages and biofeedback training to reduce neck and shoulder muscle tension can help heal existing disorders.

RSI Specific conditions

Repetitive strain injury is not a specific disease but a loose group of other, more specific conditions. Some of these are:

• Tendonitis
• Stenosing tenosynovitis
• Tenosynovitis
• Carpal tunnel syndrome
• DeQuervain's syndrome
• Thoracic outlet syndrome
• Trigger finger/thumb
• Intersection syndrome
• Reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome (RSDS)

Note that many of these disorders are interrelated, so a typical sufferer may have many of these at once. In this case it is often best to treat RSI as a single general disorder, targeting all major areas of the arms and upper back in the course of treatment.

The most famous repetitive strain injury is carpal tunnel syndrome, which is common among assembly line workers but relatively rare among computer users: computer-related arm pain is generally caused by another specific condition.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Repetitive Strain Injury"