Original Article EFFECTS OF MYOFASCIAL RELEASE THERAPY ON PAIN RELATED DISABILITY, QUALITY OF SLEEP AND DEPRESSION IN OLDER ADULTS

Low back pain was experienced by 50 % of older adults that has threatened to quality of life. The economic cost of low back pain is more in older adults. Various literatures found that there is strong relationships exist between the low back pain and the psychosocial factors like sleep disturbances, depression, mood sway and chronic illness. Studies has found that depression is one of the commonest psychological problem faced by older adults which relates to other factors like pain, sleep disturbances ect.. Physiotherapy has been shown very effective in the management of chronic low back pain. Various approaches in physiotherapy play a major role in rehabilitation of patients with chronic low back pain. This study estimates to find out the effect of myofascial release therapy on pain related disability, quality of sleep and depression in older adults with chronic low back pain. Study is a single group pre test and post test design. 37 Patients with chronic low back pain were selected from a community setup. Selected subjects were undergone 6 weeks of myofascial release therapy along with moist heat therapy. At the end the outcome measured are pain related disability using pain disability index, Quality of sleep using Insomnia severity index and depression using beck depression inventory. The paired ‘t ’ test was used to find out the differences between variables. The result showed that there was a significant improvement in the pre test and post test variables. The beck depression inventory was 21.3 (p<0.05%), and the pain disability index was 24.9 (p<0.05%). The study concludes that the myofascial release therapy is very effective in reducing the pain related disability, quality of sleep and depression on older adults with chronic low back pain