[Effectiveness studies in the Italian literature on occupational health (1990-2006)]

INTRODUCTION: Evidence-based prevention (EBP) is gaining the growing interest of the scientific community in Occupational Health (OH). To highlight the Italian contribution to EBP, a systematic review was performed, on the main OH-journals publishing in Italian language. METHODS: Studies that have evaluated interventions carried out to improve workers' health were found out from the articles published in the period 1990-2006, by means of hand-searching. The selected articles were classified on occupational health topics as health intervention, study design, risk factor, authors affiliation. RESULTS: 16 publications were selected, which represent less than 0.5% of all papers published on the 8 Italian journals examined. The most frequent study-design is the pre-post intervention evaluation; 2 out of 16 (25%) studies are randomized trial. The interventions are directed mainly to control the effects of noise and biomechanical overload; textile, health-care and energy production are the most frequent industrial settings. We did not found researches aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions performed in the metalware industry or addressed to injuries prevention. DISCUSSION: The systematic approach of EBP can be applied to most of the occupational health interventions and effectiveness evaluation should represent a challenge for the occupational health field. The results of the hand searching among publication in Italian could raise interesting debate about methodology and outcomes in the scientific community.