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Naik S1, Intwala A1, Desai R1, Naik K1, Saravanan M2
1Asian Physiotherapy & Research Institute, Surat, India, 2The Sarvajanik College of Physiotherapy, Surat, India
Background: In today's world, cancer, pneumonia, heart disease, or non-communicable diseases are considered as big health challenges. But we don't consider mundane daily conditions like backaches, neck or knee pains. Chronic pain greatly impacts person's mental, physical and spiritual life, affecting their quality of life (QoL). According to WHO's Global Burden of Disease, every fifth person is likely to suffer from some kind of pain.
Purpose: Pain being a global health problem, there is a serious dearth of data on pain in India with very few, low sample epidemiological studies. Therefore, we wanted to look at the point prevalence of pain in larger population of more than 10000 persons from approximately 4000 houses. We also studied awareness about Physiotherapy and did persons with pain considered Physiotherapy as a treatment option.
Methods: From the ongoing cross-sectional interview study, we present data of 642 persons from 252 houses across all Muncipal Corporation Zones of Surat city. We did door-to-door, one-on-one personal interview of all available persons above 18 years from each house. We collected: 1) questionnaire that assessed demography, prevalence of pain, frequency, sites of pain, movements causes pain, physical activity (PA), awareness about Physiotherapy, treatment taken; 2) objective data of height, weight with standardized height-weighing machine and footprints with baropodometric plate.
Results: 84.52% houses have at least one person suffering from musculoskeletal pain. In 32.14% houses, all surveyed persons had pain. Total point prevalence of pain is 60.59%. Pain in back(46%), knees(36.8%), neck(16.2%), shoulder(14.1%) were most common. About 43.75%(neck-pain) to 71.43%(back-pain) of persons had pain since more than a year. A logistic regression was performed to ascertain the effects of age, body mass index (BMI), gender and physical activity on the likelihood that persons have pain. The model was statistically significant, Chisquare(4)=178.702,p 0.0005, explained 34.2%(Nagelkerke-R2) of the variance in pain and correctly classified 72.6% cases. Females(67.01%) were more likely to exhibit pain than males(50.97%). Increasing age and BMI were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of exhibiting pain. There was no significant association in existence of pain with presence or absence of PA. Further, only 19.79% of persons with pain took physiotherapy. Overall, 69% persons were aware about the role of Physiotherapy but only 26.15% took Physiotherapy for their pain.
Conclusion(s): A significant population of India suffers from chronic pain, affecting their QoL and functionality. Across the globe, physiotherapy, weight management and psychological therapies are considered gold standard for the treatment of most musculoskeletal pain. But in India, more than 70% of persons with pain preferred pain killers and ointments to combat pain. Inspite of increased awareness about physiotherapy, Indian population has not considered Physiotherapy as the most important treatment option for pain.
Implications: In developing country like India, where quality research is in infancy stage, completion of such large population study will help us understand prevalence of pain and its associated factors. It will help us create national-level awareness campaigns to reduce the prevalence of chronic pain with the decrease use of medications and promoting physiotherapy as one of the best treatment option available for pain.
Keywords: Pain, physiotherapy, physical activity
Funding acknowledgements: None
Purpose: Pain being a global health problem, there is a serious dearth of data on pain in India with very few, low sample epidemiological studies. Therefore, we wanted to look at the point prevalence of pain in larger population of more than 10000 persons from approximately 4000 houses. We also studied awareness about Physiotherapy and did persons with pain considered Physiotherapy as a treatment option.
Methods: From the ongoing cross-sectional interview study, we present data of 642 persons from 252 houses across all Muncipal Corporation Zones of Surat city. We did door-to-door, one-on-one personal interview of all available persons above 18 years from each house. We collected: 1) questionnaire that assessed demography, prevalence of pain, frequency, sites of pain, movements causes pain, physical activity (PA), awareness about Physiotherapy, treatment taken; 2) objective data of height, weight with standardized height-weighing machine and footprints with baropodometric plate.
Results: 84.52% houses have at least one person suffering from musculoskeletal pain. In 32.14% houses, all surveyed persons had pain. Total point prevalence of pain is 60.59%. Pain in back(46%), knees(36.8%), neck(16.2%), shoulder(14.1%) were most common. About 43.75%(neck-pain) to 71.43%(back-pain) of persons had pain since more than a year. A logistic regression was performed to ascertain the effects of age, body mass index (BMI), gender and physical activity on the likelihood that persons have pain. The model was statistically significant, Chisquare(4)=178.702,p 0.0005, explained 34.2%(Nagelkerke-R2) of the variance in pain and correctly classified 72.6% cases. Females(67.01%) were more likely to exhibit pain than males(50.97%). Increasing age and BMI were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of exhibiting pain. There was no significant association in existence of pain with presence or absence of PA. Further, only 19.79% of persons with pain took physiotherapy. Overall, 69% persons were aware about the role of Physiotherapy but only 26.15% took Physiotherapy for their pain.
Conclusion(s): A significant population of India suffers from chronic pain, affecting their QoL and functionality. Across the globe, physiotherapy, weight management and psychological therapies are considered gold standard for the treatment of most musculoskeletal pain. But in India, more than 70% of persons with pain preferred pain killers and ointments to combat pain. Inspite of increased awareness about physiotherapy, Indian population has not considered Physiotherapy as the most important treatment option for pain.
Implications: In developing country like India, where quality research is in infancy stage, completion of such large population study will help us understand prevalence of pain and its associated factors. It will help us create national-level awareness campaigns to reduce the prevalence of chronic pain with the decrease use of medications and promoting physiotherapy as one of the best treatment option available for pain.
Keywords: Pain, physiotherapy, physical activity
Funding acknowledgements: None
Topic: Pain & pain management; Musculoskeletal; Health promotion & wellbeing/healthy ageing
Ethics approval required: No
Institution: The Sarvajanik College of Physiotherapy, Surat, Gujarat, India
Ethics committee: Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) of The Sarvajanik college of Physiotherapy
Reason not required: Being an observational study with no intervention and no collection of any personal information, ethical approval was not required for the study. Written informed consent was taken prior to the study after detailed explanation to the participants. Ethical issues were taken into consideration as per Helsinki Declaration.
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
