The influence of the active range of movement of pianists' wrists on repetitive strain injury.

SUMMARY In the present work we studied the mobility of young pianistswrists to predict their potential vulnerability to suffer from Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). First, we observed that 222 individuals out of the 341 pianists studied (65.1% of the total) pre- sented or had presented RSI. Second, from among affected performers we chose those that were younger than 16 years old (67 individuals) to analyse the active range of motion (AROM) of their wrist joints. Our results indicated that hypermobility of joints such as the wrists may be an asset in piano playing. In this respect, pianists that could per- form both maximal flexions and extensions were rarely affected by RSI. In addition we observed that the individuals able to perform maximal extensions were more resistant to RSI than those that merely performed maximal flexions. To solve this situation of discrimination and inadaptation, which may bring misery to many pianists, the creation of a new repertoire would be recommendable, as well as the use of an inte- grative teaching regimen that considers peform- ers to be able to adapt individually instruction systems to the individuals morphotype. It is noted that further studies in this area are required to reduce the incidence of playing-relat- ed medical problems in general, and RSI in par- ticular, in pianists population.