Association Between Pain with Disability in the Elderly with Dementia

Background: Elderly is one of the most important and critical periods of life, and paying attention to the issues and problems of this period is very important. Objectives: The present study was performed to investigate the relationship between pain and disability in the elderly with dementia in 2021. Methods: In the present cross-sectional descriptive study, 120 elderly people with dementia were included. The instruments used in the four sections were the demographic profile form, the P-APS pain observation tool, and Stanford Disability Questionnaire questions. the researcher identified the elderly with dementia by available sampling method and if the elderly with dementia were eligible and written informed consent was obtained from the elderly and their primary caregivers, the questionnaires were completed. Conditions of pain and disability were described by descriptive tests, and then the relationship between pain and the degree of disability in patients was analyzed by statistical analysis using SPSS16 software. Results: The results showed mean (SD) pain score was 14.45 (4.23), disability score was 12.75 (3.09), and fall score was 37 (30.8%). According to pain score status classification, 4 (3.3%) of the elderly had no pain, 8 (6.7%) had mild pain, 27 (22.5%) had moderate pain, and 81 (67.5%) had severe pain. There is a significant relationship between pain status and disability in the elderly with dementia. By increase in pain, the patients had more disability (P = 0.000, F = 79.971). Conclusions: As the pain increased, the disability of the elderly with dementia decreased. For this reason, preventive interventions are explained in this field.