Study of the effect of different causes of disability and early retirement in air force personnel between 1992-2003

Manpower is one of the most important assets in every organization especially in military forces. There is an association between personnel''s well being and the productivity of every organization. Disability is one of the most important health، economic، social and political concerns in every society and military forces that requires resources and medical care and will result in loss of active duty time. According to studies the most common causes of disability are cardiovascular، psychiatric and musculo skeletal diseases. In this retrospeative study، information related to air force personnel that were retired due to medical reasons between 1992-2003 was gathered and analyzed by the SPSS software. A total of 1931 personnel were retired early in those 11 years due to medical reasons. The most common causes of disability among them being: 1. Cardiovascular (38. 3%) 2. Neurosurgeries (17. 9%) 3. Gastrointestinal (7. 9%) 4. Ophthalmologic (7. 1%) 5. Psychiatric (4. 9%). With cardiovascular diseases being the most common cause of disability its important to improve personnel''s general knowledge about coronary artery disease، risk factors and preventive measures to reduce the incidence of this disease and associated disability. Psychiatric diseases were associated with most of the active duty time loss and therefore it''s important to perform psychiatric evaluation even before starting of the military service.