Comparative Analysis of Pain, Muscle Strength, Disability, and Quality of Life in Middle-Aged and Older Adults After...

This study analyzed the effect of lower back exercise using Web for each age group to use it as nursing intervention. We conducted a randomized experiment with 54 patients with low back pain, composed of 26 middle-aged and 28 older adult people with low back pain who visited a joint center. The participants were instructed to perform the exercise at least twice a day, four times a week. Pain, muscle strength, disability, and quality of life were measured before the exercise intervention, and data were collected again 8 weeks after. The data were analyzed using independent t tests, χ2test, Fisher's exact tests, repeated measures analysis of variance, and paired t tests. The middle-aged and older groups showed differences in pain, muscle strength, disability, and quality of life before and after exercise. In particular, the older group showed statistically significantly larger differences in quality of life compared with the middle-aged group. The results indicated that the effects of the lower back exercises, performed using the Web-based videos, were the same for both the middle-aged and older groups, whereas quality of life showed better improvement in the latter than in the former group. For elderly patients, exercise intervention is an appropriate nursing care to improve the quality of life.