Quality of life in the elderly with and without chronic pain

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: In the last decade, the elderly population has grown worldwide, both in developed and developing countries. Together with the aging process, the prevalence of chronic diseases and consequently the presence of pain are common and may have a strong impact on the quality of life of the elderly. The objective of this study was to evaluate the quality of life of elderly patients with and without chronic pain and to compare the quality of life with the number of chronic pathologies, pain intensity and age range METHODS: A quantitative, descriptive cross-sectional study carried out in a city in the West of the state of Santa Catarina with a sample of 385 senior people living in the urban area. The instruments of analysis were: the Mental State Mini Exam; the general data questionnaire adapted from Morais, Rodrigues e Gerhardt; The WHOQOL-OLD questionnaire, and a visual numerical scale. For the intergroup comparison, the Mann-Whitney test was used, and Pearson’s correlation was used in the correlations. RESULTS: It was observed the predominance of pain of moderate intensity. Old people with chronic pain have a lower quality of life index than the group without pain regardless the gender, and those who have chronic pain and age above 71 years have a lower quality of life index. CONCLUSION: The presence of chronic pain, number of diseases, pain intensity, female gender and age group above 71 years negatively influenced the quality of life of the elderly studied