Eficacia del Método POLD como tratamiento en pacientes adultos mayores con lumbalgia

Abstract

Low back pain is considered one of the most common health problems in primary care since a high percentage of the population may experience low back pain, which could cause functional limitations leading to disability. To evaluate efficacy of new methods for the management of low back pain, the present study determined the efficiency of the POLD method in reducing pain in elderly patients with low back pain at the Chillanes Gerontological Center during the period July-December 2020. For this, a quasi-experimental study was designed on 30 older adults from the Centro Gerontológico Del Cantón Chillanes. Before intervention, both the level of pain and the degree of disability in patients were evaluated using the VAS and Oswestry tests, respectively, and subsequently the POLD method was applied to each patient. According to the VAS test, pain levels varying from 7 to 9 were detected, with 53.3% of the cases indicating pain level 8, while only 20 and 26.7% showed pain levels of 7 and 9, respectively, while 73.3% of the patients had between 21 and 40% of disability (moderate disability) and 26.6% had disability between 41-60 and 61-80% (severe disability or disabled). The application of the POLD method shown to have a positive effect both in reducing pain and the degree of disability, even when it remained within the moderate disability range, which ranged from 21 to 40%. Finally, the prevalence of the level of pain in relation to sex, pain decreased to a scale between 7 and 8 in women, while in men the highest proportion was 7. Given the positive effects of the POLD Method, it is suggested to make a greater dissemination of the method in different geriatric centers of the country.