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Anthropometrics and Ergonomics in Pregnant Women

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Women's Health and Biomechanics

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computational Vision and Biomechanics ((LNCVB,volume 29))

Abstract

Pregnancy is a women life event that impacts her own and offspring’s life; surprisingly, few systematic and scientific maternal information is available in the literature for anthropometric and ergonomic purposes. Regarding ergonomics, some authors state that guidelines should be design for pregnant women. These guidelines may consider anthropometric issues such as changes in weight and distribution of mass, which influence mobility, home and labour performance, mood and cognition. Anthropometrics allows the body measurement, but in pregnancy women are sparingly characterized, besides Body Mass Index and few other parameters. Ergonomics not only aids in the design process of work or home layouts, but also contains several evaluation tools to determine the level of risk of musculoskeletal disorders of daily or labour tasks. Some of these tools are very specific and others have certain conditions that should be met before using them. The purpose of this study is to present an overview of guidelines and discuss which anthropometric and ergonomic evaluation tools may be used, and under which conditions can be implemented in pregnant women.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of a Project Grant (UID/MULTI/00308/2013) funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal

    Henrique A. Almeida, Rita M. T. Ascenso & Eunice Oliveira

  2. Center for Research in Informatics and Communications, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, Leiria, Portugal

    Rita M. T. Ascenso

  3. R&D Unit INESC Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Eunice Oliveira

Authors
  1. Henrique A. Almeida
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  2. Rita M. T. Ascenso
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  3. Eunice Oliveira
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Henrique A. Almeida .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, CHSJ-EPE, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Sofia Brandão

  2. Department of Biomechanics, College of Health and Sport Science (CEFID), Santa Catarina State University (UDESC), Florianópolis, Brazil

    Thuane Da Roza

  3. Department of Radiology, CHSJ-EPE, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Isabel Ramos

  4. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, CHSJ-EPE, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Teresa Mascarenhas

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Almeida, H.A., Ascenso, R.M.T., Oliveira, E. (2018). Anthropometrics and Ergonomics in Pregnant Women. In: Brandão, S., Da Roza, T., Ramos, I., Mascarenhas, T. (eds) Women's Health and Biomechanics. Lecture Notes in Computational Vision and Biomechanics, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71574-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71574-2_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71573-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71574-2

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