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Abstract
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BACKGROUND: Pain interference and psychological concerns related to falls (PCRF) are pervasive phenomena among community dwelling older adults, yet their association remains elusive.
OBJECTIVE: To establish if pain interference is associated with psychological concerns related to falls in community dwelling older adults.
DESIGN: Multisite cross sectional study.
METHOD: Two hundred and ninety five community dwelling older adults were recruited (77.5±8.1 years, 66.4% female). All participants completed the brief pain inventory (BPI) interference subscale and the short falls efficacy scale international (FES-I), activities balance confidence scale (ABC), the modified version of the survey of activities and fear of falling in elderly scale (mSAFFE) and consequences of falling scale (CoF). Hierarchical multiple regression analysis were conducted. In the first step socio-demographic and known risk factors for PCRF were inserted into the model, followed by the BPI interference subscale score in the second step.
RESULTS: One hundred and sixty nine (57.3%) participants reported some pain interference. The BPI interference subscale was highly correlated with all PCRF (r>0.5, p<0.0001). After the adjustment for established risk factors, the BPI interference subscale significantly increased the variance in the short FES-I scale (R(2) change=13.2%), the ABC (R(2) change=4.7%), mSAFFE (R(2) change =5.0%) and CoF (R(2) change =10.0%). Pain interference was a significant and independent predictor in the final model for the short FES-1 (β=.455, p<0.001), ABC (β=-.265, p<0.001), mSAFFE (β=.276, p<0.001) and CoF scale (β=.390, p<0.001). LIMITATIONS: This study was cross sectional.
CONCLUSIONS: Pain interference is an important contributing factor to each of the psychological concerns related to falls. Pain interference had the strongest impact on reducing falls efficacy and increasing older adults concerns about the consequences of falling.
Language: en |