Quality of life in Elderly Population with grade 1 knee osteoarthritis

Abstract

Background: Knee osteoarthritis is continuously a degeneration process of the bone and its upper cartilage that gradually deteriorate the joint and its surrounding structures. Increase in pain and decrease in the functional activities often experienced by the patients that leads to the marked decrease in the quality of life of the individual. Objective of Study: To assess the quality of life of the elderly population with grade 1 knee osteoarthritis. Methodology: It was a cross sectional descriptive and analytical study, which was conducted in the Niazi Hospital Lahore.384 patients were taken through sequential non-probability samplingafter meeting inclusion criteria. Data was entered in terms of rand sf36.data analysis was done by using spss version20. Results: BMI was majorly in between 35 to 40 showed mostly patients were overweight and among them females were more dominant. Pain in the knees while walking was experienced by 64% of the respondents and 94% of the participants had experienced extreme pain during stair climbing. Physical functional activity was restricted in 72% patients. Quality of life was measured by Rand SF 36 scale according to that it was seen physical functioning score is 18.48 and st.7.0 shows that physical functioning is poor. Conclusion: It is concluded that there is very poor life quality in elderly patients suffering from grade 1 knee osteoarthritis. People suffering from grade 1 knee osteoarthritis have very low knowledge of their life quality in functional activities, physical limitation and pain. So it is concluded that there is a strong direct association between the less education and less perception regarding quality of life.This conclusion was so relevant to the fact that people with level of education if indulged in healthy physical activities, higher impacts can be gained. Key words: knee osteoarthritis, elder population, quality of life