You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 65, Issue Suppl 1
  • P2-171 Pain among older people and its impact on disability: a 10/66 cross-sectional population-based surveys in Latin America, India and China

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Poster session 2
Chronic disease
P2-171 Pain among older people and its impact on disability: a 10/66 cross-sectional population-based surveys in Latin America, India and China
  1. P Manzolli1,
  2. D Acosta2,
  3. M Guerra3,
  4. Y Huang4,
  5. K S Jacob5,
  6. J Rodriguez6,
  7. A Salas7,
  8. A L Sosa8,
  9. J Williams9,
  10. M Prince10,
  11. C Ferri10
  1. 1Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil
  2. 2Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Ureña (UNPHU), Internal Medicine Department, Geriatric Section, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
  3. 3Psychogeriatric Unit, National Institute of Mental Health “Honorio Delgado Hideyo Noguchi”, Lima, Peru
  4. 4Peking University, Institute of Mental Health, Beijing, China
  5. 5Christian Medical College, Vellore, India
  6. 6Facultad de Medicina Finlay-Albarran, Medical University of Havana, Havana, Cuba
  7. 7Medicine Department, Caracas University Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela
  8. 8National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery of Mexico, National University Autonomous of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico
  9. 9Department of Community Health, Voluntary Health Services, Chennai, India
  10. 10Centre for Public Mental Health, Health Services & Population Research Department, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, Health Services & Population Research Department, London, UK

Abstract

Introduction Pain is an important indicator of health mainly among older adults. The aim of the present study is to describe the prevalence of pain and to examine the relationship between pain and disability in elderly.

Methods One-phase cross-sectional surveys of all residents aged 65 years and over (n=15 177) living in eight low- and middle-income countries. Pain was measured using three questions, about frequency, severity and extent of limitation associated with pain in the previous 4 weeks. Disability was assessed using the 12 item WHODAS 2.0. We calculated the crude and standardised prevalence of pain and used Poisson regression prevalence ratios, to estimate the association between pain and severe disability, and to generate population attributable prevalence fractions (PAPF).

Results The overall prevalence of pain—defined as any type of pain in the last 4 weeks - ranged between 15.1% (China) and 46.0% (Peru) in urban sites and between 33.5% (Peru) and 58.8% (India) in rural sites. Pain was associated with severe disability, prevalence ratio pooled estimate was 1.49 (95% CI 1.21 to 1.78), adjusted for depression, number of impairments and chronic disease diagnoses. The adjusted PAPF showed that 39.2% of severe disability could be explained by pain.

Conclusion The results show that the prevalence of pain in the elderly is high. Pain seems to be an important contributor to disability among older people. Pain in older people is an increasingly important health issue worldwide, and one that requires urgent worldwide attention from the public health and clinical perspectives.

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2011.142976j.6

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.