Introduction / background / objectives:

The use of anti-vibration gloves is not as frequent as other individual protective equipment, so it becomes an area in which the professionals that exercise in the Occupational Health teams (and even employers and workers) have less contact and experience. In addition, when starting to research the topic, it is easy to see that there are contradictory data published, so there are many doubts about the benefit or not on its use. This review intends to summarize the most recent and pertinent articles published on this topic.

Methodology:

This is an Integrative Bibliographic Review, initiated through a research carried out in December 2019 in the databases “CINALH plus with full text, Medline with full text, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Methodology Register, Nursing and Allied Health Collection: comprehensive, MedicLatina, SCOPUS and RCAAP”.

Content:

For a glove be considered anti-vibration, it must comply with the criteria defined by the International Standardization Organization.

The sensitivity to damage associated with vibrations has some variability between individuals.

Vibrations can cause vascular, neurological and musculoskeletal changes; overall, the situation referred to as hand-arm vibration syndrome; this becomes more frequent with increasing exposure time and intensity.

In addition to the direct protection that may exist in relation to vibrations, by keeping the hands dry and warm, vibratory damage can be indirectly attenuated. In addition, regardless of the vibration issue, the worker is also more protected from cuts, burns, chemical and biological agents.

The greatest risk may then be to give the employer and employee a sense of protection when it is not real. In addition, some researchers believe that certain collective protection measures are more effective than gloves.

Conclusions:

The published data are contradictory and the studies generally used small samples, so it is difficult to generalize the results with safety. In addition, it is easy to see that the protection, absence of it or even potentiation of vibrations will depend on numerous variables, namely working instrument, type of vibrations, model/ material and glove thickness in the palm and fingers, as well as grip strength exercised by the worker and its anthropometric dimensions. It is therefore a protective equipment that, in no way, can be considered as an added value, for any task or worker.

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