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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Exploring the prevalence of and factors associated with pain
— a cross-sectional study of community-dwelling people with dementia | | Author(s) | Heather E Barry, Carole Parsons, A Peter Passmore, Carmel M Hughes |
| Journal title | Health and Social Care in the Community, vol 24, no 3, May 2016 |
| Publisher | Wiley Blackwell, May 2016 |
| Pages | pp 270-282 |
| Source | wileyonlinelibrary.com/journals/hsc |
| Keywords | Pain ; Dementia ; Drugs ; Living in the community ; Informal care ; Cross sectional surveys ; Northern Ireland. |
| Annotation | Few pain studies have made community-dwelling people with dementia (PWD) their focus. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of pain among this patient population and to explore medication use. The study also sought to investigate patient and caregiver variables associated with the presence of pain. Community-dwelling PWD and their caregivers were recruited between May 2009 and July 2012 from outpatient memory clinics in Northern Ireland to take part in a face-to-face structured interview with a researcher. Patients' cognitive status and presence of depression were established. A full medication history was taken. Both patients and caregivers were asked to rate patients' pain, at the time of the interview and on an average day, using a 7-point verbal descriptor scale. From the 206 patients who were eligible to take part, 75 patient-caregiver dyads participated in the study (participation rate = 36.4%). The majority of patients (92.0%) had dementia classed as mild or moderate. Pain was commonly reported among the sample, with 57.3% of patients and 70.7% of caregivers reporting patient pain on an average day. Significant differences were found between patients' and caregivers' reports of pain. Two-fifths of patients (40.0%) were prescribed analgesia. Antipsychotic, hypnotic and anxiolytic drug use was low, whereas antidepressant drugs were prescribed more commonly. Presence of pain was unaffected by dementia severity; however, the use of prescribed analgesic medication was a significant predictor of the presence of pain in these patients, whether reported by the patient or their caregiver 'right now' or 'on an average day' (P < 0.001). Patient and caregiver recruitment was challenging, and remains a barrier to future research in this area. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-160415214 A |
| Classmark | CT7: EA: LLD: K4: P6: 3KB: 9Y |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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