Clinical Interventions in Aging (Oct 2010)
Elderly quality of life impacted by traditional chinese medicine techniques
Abstract
Helena A Figueira1,3,5, Olivia A Figueira2, Alan A Figueira1,4, Joana A Figueira1, Tania S Giani1,3,5, Estélio HM Dantas3,51ABACO/Sohaku-in Institute, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; 2IPEMED – Medical Research and Teaching Institute, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; 3LABIMH/ UNIRio – Laboratory of Biomedical Human Kinetics/Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; 4UFF, Federal Fluminense University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; 5REMH – Euroamerican Network of Human Kinetics, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilBackground: The shift in age structure is having a profound impact, suggesting that the aged should be consulted as reporters on the quality of their own lives.Objectives: The aim of this research was to establish the possible impact of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) techniques on the quality of life (QOL) of the elderly.Sample: Two non-selected, volunteer groups of Rio de Janeiro municipality inhabitants: a control group (36 individuals), not using TCM, and an experimental group (28 individuals), using TCM at ABACO/Sohaku-in Institute, Brazil.Methods: A questionnaire on elderly QOL devised by the World Health Organization, the WHOQOL-Old, was adopted and descriptive statistical techniques were used: mean and standard deviation. The Shapiro–Wilk test checked the normality of the distribution. Furthermore, based on its normality distribution for the intergroup comparison, the Student t test was applied to facets 2, 4, 5, 6, and total score, and the Mann–Whitney U rank test to facets 1 and 3, both tests aiming to analyze the P value between experimental and control groups. The significance level utilized was 95% (P < 0.05).Results: The experimental group reported the highest QOL for every facet and the total score.Conclusions: The results suggest that TCM raises the level of QOL.Keywords: quality of life, traditional chinese medicine, east-west medicine, WHOQOL-Old, elderly
