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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health

Sec. Occupational Health and Safety

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1602761

This article is part of the Research TopicTrends in Occupational Health Epidemiology: The Role of Diet, Sleep and Shift Work in Chronic DiseaseView all 14 articles

Epidemiological patterns and occupational predictors of electrocardiographic abnormalities in seafarers: a multicenter health screening analysis

Provisionally accepted
Can  CuiCan CuiHui  ZhuHui Zhu*
  • General Hospital of The Yangtze River Shipping, Wuhan Brain Hospital, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Background To analyse the results of seafarers' health checkups, to understand the physical health status of seafarers and the high incidence of diseases, and to investigate the factors related to the abnormalities of electrocardiograms (ECG) of seafarers, so as to provide theoretical basis for improving the health level of seafarers and formulating the health intervention plan for seafarers. Methods 10,174 seafarers who underwent health checkups at the Yangtze River Shipping General Hospital from January 2024 to December 2024 were selected as the survey subjects, and clinical data such as their general conditions, ECG and other functional examinations, and biochemical indicators were extracted. SPSS 26.0 software was used for statistical analysis to understand the disease composition of seafarers' health checkups, and single-factor analysis and multifactor logistic regression analysis were used to explore the influencing factors of seafarers' abnormal ECG results. Results Abnormal body mass index (BMI), abdominal obesity, refractive error, liver function abnormality, ECG abnormality, high blood pressure, high fasting blood glucose and other abnormalities were more common in the health checkup of seafarers. Among them, abnormal ECG is mainly classified into myocardial ischemia/infarction and arrhythmia. Fatty liver and urinary stones were common in ultrasound examination of seafarers over 40 years old. High blood pressure, high fasting blood glucose and smoking were risk factors for abnormal ECG results. Conclusions Carrying out the health management of seafarers, strengthening the health education of seafarers with high prevalence of diseases, dynamically tracking the abnormal results of seafarers' physical examination, and increasing the prevention and control of cardiovascular diseases in seafarers' group can effectively improve the comprehensive health level of seafarers' group.

Keywords: Seafarers, ECG abnormalities, Risk factors, Health management, Marine safety

Received: 30 Mar 2025; Accepted: 30 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Cui and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Hui Zhu, 274125349@qq.com

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