Pre- and post-employment median nerve latency in pork processing employees.

There is some controversy regarding the relationship between development of median nerve dysfunction and employment activities. We performed nerve conduction studies of median nerve function on individuals before and after starting employment in the pork processing industry. After working an average of 64 days, employees (n = 45) showed significant prolongation of median motor and sensory nerve latency when comparing initial and final testing results in both dominant and non-dominant hands (P = < 0.01 to 0.03). A similar trend was found when testing a smaller group of employees (n = 17) who were already working (mean of 3 days), though this did not generally reach statistical significance. This study supports the conclusion that prolongation of median motor and sensory nerve latency can occur within as little as 2 months after beginning employment in the pork processing industry.